Luke Harding in Durban There was a certain wry symbolism as Prince Harry watched his father greet the crowds from the 12th-floor balcony of the Royal Hotel in Durban. As Charles shook hands in the civic square with British expatriates, Harry waved at his dad. Charles waved back at the diminutive red-haired figure above him. […]

Robert Kirby : Loose Cannon I adopt as the subject for my sermon this week the recent decision by the Western Cape’s leading prophet, Hernus Kriel. Kriel has announced that as far as he’s concerned, the democratically imbued people of the Western Cape have every right to express their opinions on whether or not the […]

FRIDAY 10.30AM: The South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) says South Africa’s growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) economic strategy is protecting the country’s economy from the harsh international evaluations other emerging economies are suffering. Releasing Sacob’s business confidence index on Thursday for October — which remained unchanged from the previous month — economic policy director […]

Marion Edmunds A former state consultant has offered to help the government trace billions of rands he claims to have smuggled into offshore bank accounts for the apartheid regime. Dr Arnold van Eck is believed to have told the government he was responsible for spiriting away loot for the National Party government into bank accounts […]

Barney Spender : Rugby Crossing the road in Bologna can be a difficult and dangerous business. The drivers of the cars and buses at least have the decency to lean on their horns before flying past; the ubiquitous Lambrettas, on the other hand, do not. They come from nowhere and are gone before the dawdling […]

The impudent truth commissioner Stefaans Brmmer Truth commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza is impetuous, arrogant (or very confident, depending on your vantage point), ambitious and fiercely independent. Add to that an almost naive openness and you have someone asking to be beaten up on, leaving his guard way down when the knock-out punch is thrown. By Monday […]

for the human genome What links Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln? Well, a US company wants to sell their DNA. Mark Honigsbaum reports Earlier this year StarGene, a San Francisco- based biotechnology company, hit on a novel marketing idea. Using the latest DNA cloning techniques it would duplicate samples of DNA taken from […]

Alison Motluk A simple skin patch might soon help psychiatrists identify people with schizophrenia – a diagnosis that can be very difficult to make. The developers of the test also hope that it will help sufferers accept that they need medication. The “niacin skin flush test” consists of a plastic strip bearing squares of absorbent […]

Gustav Thiel Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi’s plans to tie the entire police force into performance contracts could be throttled by a lack of funds. The plans, which Mufamadi unveiled in February, were vaunted as a key step toward lifting police performance – rewarding the good and punishing slackers – in a strategy designed […]

It seemed like the bad old days were back in the Free State this week when a white man was fined for beating a worker, writes Ann Eveleth A 38-year-old Free State farmer grinned in the Welkom Regional Court last Friday as he paid a R3 000 fine for beating and chaining a shepherd to […]