smoke Mungo Soggot The National Intelligence Agency (NIA)destroyed key state documents as late as November 1996, complementing the wholesale destruction of state records undertaken by the previous government from 1990. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC)final report says in a section on South Africa’s gutted archive that the NIA destroyed records from the intelligence services […]

David Shapshak Debt relief topped the agenda at the Second Tokyo International Conference on African Development between October 19 and 21, when Japan announced a grant bail-out for some African countries. This was perhaps the most significant and concrete achievement of the conference, which adopted an ambitious “agenda for action” to halve the present levels […]

Review of the week Brenda Atkinson The worldly cynicism of student advertising work is wonderful for its predictability and passion, depressing for the inevitable brevity of its life-span. As such, this year’s AAA School of Advertising/Oxygen Award exhibition was a vaguely poignant affair that made me wonder just what happens to youthful irony when it […]

Johnny Masilela MY WARRIOR SON by Mary Anne Fitzgerald (Penguin) This is the story of the relationship between Mary Anne Fitzgerald – who grew up in the United States and South Africa – and Peter Kepaeka, a Masai lad, allegedly an orphan, whom she adopted. She was working as a foreign correspondent in Kenya at […]

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s prison comrades have been freed. But they are still struggling to come to terms with the horror of ordeal, reports Alex Duval Smith Aa ke, Aa ke Pya Ogoni aa ke Iilee yira na ko Yoo-ue a zia-i Arise, arise, Ogoni people arise We shall no longer allow people to cheat us – […]

Many whiteys prefer Soweto to Sandton. Tangeni Amupadhi and Thokozani Mtshali talk to the township’s paler inhabitants Soweto’s majita (the guys) wave at Rudolf “Thokozani” Blignault as he travels the township selling coal for household use. Blignault is well known in large parts of the country’s biggest township, not only because he works there but […]

South Africa supports the aims of Jubilee 2000, but it seems we don’t qualify for debt relief. Ann Eveleth reports Each year the South African government spends as much money paying interest on its R338-billion debt as it does on education, but the Department of Finance insists there is no easy way out. Jubilee 2000 […]

Jim McClellan meets a man who wants to sweep away the concept of the home computer Here’s a question to ponder: how many electric motors do you have in your house? Probably more than you realise. But you don’t think of them as electric motors. Instead, you just get on with using your food mixer […]

Alex Duval Smith in Lagos Never mind the military regime’s promises of free elections. Never mind the international community’s endorsement. What 100-million Nigerians want to know is: what would Fela Kuti have said? The hard-living, outspoken inventor of afrobeat, who died last year and would have been 60 this Thursday, left behind both a musical […]

`Woza Friday, my darling!” went the chorus from a traditional song by migrant workers in the olden days. Emerging from their miserable underground life they only looked forward to two things – traditional food, and rest. With no African eateries on the mines, they prepared their sumptuous African meals themselves. These included umgodu (tripe), samp, […]