A war of words has been declared between Absa and Millenium magazine over an article defending former Tollgate chairman Julian Askin, reports Reg Rumney A number of puzzling questions are thrown up in the squabble between Absa Bank and Cape-based Millenium magazine over a series of articles it has been running on fugitive Julian Askin […]

Justin Arenstein WHEN election authorities in Mpumalanga announced that they had lost the trucks transporting ballot papers to more than 50 polling stations in the former KwaNdebele, it sounded like one of the more amusing episodes of the local elections. But when the ballot papers had still not arrived 12 hours after polls were supposed […]

At the conclusion of last year’s freedom election, then-president-elect Nelson Mandela quoted the cry of American slaves from the last century: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last. This week, at the conclusion of the next round of voting, we can paraphrase him: Normal at last, normal at […]

Northern Province ‘witches’, banished from their communities, huddle together in a tiny village where they eke out a meagre and lonely existence, writes Fumane Diseko A dust road near Pietersburg leads to Helena, an arid and lonely village hidden behind thorn trees. Shacks made in a rush when people first settled have never been improved […]

Gaye Davis CHRIS Ngcobo’s past experience of local government elections was as a Soweto activist, organising people to boycott them. So it was an historic moment when he cast his vote in Diepkloof this week. But the poll meant more to Ngcobo than making his mark on a ballot paper. As national manager of the […]

Louise Asmal THE BLACK DIASPORA by Ronald Segal (Faber & Faber, R135) THIS extraordinary compendium attempts to compress within less than 500 pages not only a description of the trade in human beings from Africa to the colonies of the various European powers, but also an account of the fate of their descendants up to […]

Millions of enthusiastic voters turned out for the poll this week, but many were met with errors on the voters’ roll which prevented them from voting, writes Gaye Davis A NEW era of local government dawned for South Africa this week as millions of voters flocked to the polls, defying predictions that apathy would keep […]

International players have given coaching clinics in Soweto before, but English cricketers actually playing at the township’s stadium is far more Cricket: Jon Swift PERHAPS some of the real significance of an international team playing cricket in Soweto will not strike the England players quite as dramatically as it will those of us who proudly […]

The Sunday Times’ policy of producing racially targeted ‘Extra’ editions has come under fire. Neil Bierbaum reports IS the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, the Sunday Times, living in the past? Gauteng Premier Tokyo Sexwale took aim at the paper’s separate racially-targeted editions last week, criticising the paper for continuing to “produce ‘Extra’ covers around their white […]

Iscor’s Hans Smith discusses his dreams and aspirations for the organisation with Aspasia Hans Jurie Smith, managing director and soon to be chairman of Iscor, describes himself as ‘a bit of a dreamer’. He has a vision of Iscor becoming a large international player in the commodities business with the potential to grow even faster […]