Uganda’s president may still be popular, writes Mercedes Sayagues, but ethnic mistrust and corruption are poisoning the country When the 5Y-ANV Islander plane carrying Lieutenant Colonel Jet Mwebaze crashed in the Rwenzori mountains of southeastern Uganda last month, five lives, a stash of money – said to be US$1-million – and the reputation of the […]

Sex is a growing global industry and South Africa is no exception. It’s just the tax collector who is missing out, write Ferial Haffajee and Tangeni Amupadhi At the Caligula nightclub near the bottom end of Hillbrow, where seedy gives way to slightly more respectable, the stripper lays out her props on the mirrored catwalk. […]

Howard Barrell : OVER A BARREL Nigeria and South Africa, radically different in so many ways, are similar in at least one respect: the way language, at least the English language, is used by many of their political intellectuals. This became apparent last year when I spent two months in Nigeria co-teaching a few courses […]

One of the most mysterious places in the world will be the most highly surveyed, writes Alex Bellos Cold War technology is being adapted to fight drug smugglers and illegal miners who are threatening the Amazon jungle. A surveillance system (known by its Portuguese acronym, Sivam, and being set up by the Brazilian government) will […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Friday 9.00pm. NIGERIAN authorities have imposed an overnight curfew on the oil town of Warri after clashes there left five youths dead and five soldiers wounded, a military officer said on Friday. The dusk-to-dawn curfew was ordered late on Thursday — the day of the clashes between youths of rival communities […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby Like a lot of other South African men, I was pleasantly amused by Suzanne Daley’s often humorous quips about how diffident we South African males have been when it has come to keeping up with the life-needs of the ladies in our midst (“I’ll Have To Ask My Husband”, October 16 […]

Ken Barris THE LOSTNESS OF ALICE by John Conyngham (Ad Donker) The Lostness of Alice, the third novel by KwaZulu-Natal author John Conyngham, is placed on the cusp of South Africa’s transition. FW de Klerk is still in power, negotiations are proceeding in fits and starts, and the pariah status of the country is only […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Tzaneen farm workers Jonas Maluleke (26) and Daniel Sono (28) have been waiting behind bars for a year to get their day in court in the Northern Province. Since they first appeared in court in October 1997, their trial on charges of rape and assault of a 25-year-old woman has been […]

Mungo Soggot The Cabinet has given Minister of Public Service and Administration Zola Skweyiya an extra R300-million to pay civil servants and fund the transformation of the public service. The increase is about 10% of the government’s R3,4-billion budget for what the public service department terms “the improvement of conditions of service”. The increase was […]

Alex Duval Smith Hundreds of people have been killed along the Nigerian coast, tens of thousands have been forced from their homes, and oil production – crucial to the country’s economy – has been cut by a quarter by an escalation of unrest that shows signs of civil war. The conflict began a month ago […]