were too afraid to ask Fear and loathing and confusion surround the Absa saga. Justin Pearce gives a guide to all the main players in the drama IT’S been a sweaty fortnight for anyone who may have put their fingers into an Absa till in the past five years. The first beads of perspiration would […]

Eddie Koch Evidence at the Eugene de Kock trial this week provided insight into the tremendous psychological pressures members of the police death squads at Vlakplaas operated under — and the therapeutic effects offered by their opportunity to tell the truth. “They beat me up to the point of submission, to the point of death […]

THEATRE: Matthew Krouse IF, in some afterworld, the great muralist Diego Riviera were to see Helene Lombard playing his wife in Frida Kahlo’s Eyes, he’d probably fall in love all over again. Her dark, angular features are so similar to Kahlo’s, it makes you wonder whether playwright Harry Kalmer created the role especially for the […]

Labour wants a greater say in the decisions made on the mines, report Karen Harverson and Vuyo Mvoko No one is arguing with Anglo American Corporation’s call last week that cost and productivity changes are needed at Free State Consolidated Gold mines (Freegold) to avoid the threatened closure of five of its shafts and the […]

Marion Edmunds ANC secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa is pulling out all the stops to win National Party support for the African National Congress’s stand on the KwaZulu-Natal provincial constitution. Ramaphosa met Constitutional Development Minister Roelf Meyer, for secret bilateral talks in Cape Town on Thursday, in a bid to unblock progress towards the provincial ANC […]

Justin Arenstein As anti-monarchist and labour protests in Swaziland continued this week, a prominent human rights campaigner claimed the country’s ruler, King Mswati III, appears to have been sidelined in a palace coup. Ironically, although the protests are directed against Swaziland’s Tinkhudla traditionalist system of government, the 27-year-old absolute monarch remains popular with the Swaziland […]

Vuyo Mvoko WHILE most former homeland radio stations are preparing to wind down their businesses, Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is tying its shoelaces. It is the employment this month of top journalists Sefako Nyaka and Frances Majola to top executive positions within the corporation which raised eyebrows. They are head of TV news and of […]

REASON has triumphed over fantasy in the Palestinian elections. Yasser Arafat’s landslide victory is an overwhelming endorsement of the peace process, and reflects a growing view among the Palestinians that their aspirations for an independent state are more likely to be gained by negotiation than by terrorism. The election result is also a vindication of […]

Rehana Rossouw The prostitute’s corpse was found buried upside down in bushes near Milnerton in November 1995, her legs and buttocks protruding above the ground. The post mortem revealed she had probably been buried alive. This month another body was found in bushes near Durbanville, and police announced a serial killer was on the loose […]