DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00pm. THE Lesotho government has washed its hands of the issue of 30 Lesotho Defence Force soldiers arrested on charges of mutiny, saying the law must take its course. But the opposition, which has demanded the soldiers’ release, is arguing that the soldiers’ mutiny was a political issue and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. THE new United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday voiced US support for President Laurent Kabila, and slammed Rwanda and Uganda for their “military interference” in the country. The comments made by William Swing on national television are the first to be made by a […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Film release patterns are very strange. One week there’s a host of movies and film festivals opening, and the next there’s virtually zip to write about. This week sees only four new movies being released, in comparison to last week’s seven along with the feast of films featured in […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD I have done some stupid things in my time. But spending the night alone in a haunted office building must rank way up there as one of my dumbest and most bizarre ideas yet. Yes, you heard right. I did say haunted and alone. It was so spooky. Every […]

bus Patrick Bond Last week, while global bureaucratic financial elites had trouble even pretending they possessed the tools to fix the world economy’s cracked engine, some passengers at the back of the bus debated whether to hijack the stalled vehicle or set out on foot. Urgent strategic planning for progressive resistance to globalised finance occurred […]

reserve’ land A new land law is set to overturn decades of paternalistic land relations between the state and more than 70 000 people living on former “coloured reserves” in the Western Cape and surrounding provinces. But similar legislation for former black homeland residents is still bogged down in “consultations”. Department of Land Affairs Director […]

Stephen Moss Jos Saramago has finally received his due from the Swedish Academy. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is the first writer in Portuguese to win the world’s most prestigious literary award. “I am very happy for myself,” he told a cheering crowd at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I am also […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

The value of loyalty and discipline in politics is greatly overstated. As much cruelty and idiocy have been organised in their name as in the service of probably any other attribute. The camp commandant at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp during World War II; the communist who raised no opposition to the murderous purges in […]

Hanekom The chief land claims commissioner says he is being made `a sacrificial beast’ as his remarks in Parliament embarrassed his minister, writes Wally Mbhele Chief land claims commissioner Joe Seremane broke his silence this week over tensions that have gripped the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights, saying that Minister of Agriculture and […]