Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo scored an important victory this week in capturing the town of Kindu, which Laurent Kabila’s government was trying to use as the launch pad for a counter-offensive against the rebels. But the victory merely underlines why that long-suffering nation cannot afford a military solution to its problems. What […]

Michael Metelits I admit it. I was a yuppie during the 1980s. Not just any kind of yuppie, either. I was the trade settlement operations manager for a small, but nonetheless venal, investment management firm in Boston. I sat on the trading floor and witnessed a great deal of what the Eighties had to offer. […]

Mathews Phosa believes he is doing what he promised the people who voted for the ANC, writes Wally Mbhele He sees himself as a crusader against officials who have given his province the reputation as the most corrupt in the country; a victim of an unfair and persecuting media, even a fall guy for the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.00am. TWO local golfers, looking for their first wins as professionals, set new course records of nine-under 62s at the Royal Johanesburg West on Thursday, when they shot their way to the top of the second-round leaderboard in the Gauteng leg of the Vodacom series. Ryan Dryer (26) and John […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Randburg’s public prosecutor struggled this week to determine whether he could prosecute the managing director of Legacy Merchant Bank, Douglass Fliess, on the bizarre charge of stealing a garden. Charges relating to the theft of plants and malicious damage to property were laid against Fliess by property agents Gary Bruyns Properties on behalf […]

Anew TV documentary seeks out the person behind the `freak’ Sara Baartman, writes Alex Dodd `Can you imagine? You’ve become a rented spectacle. You’re owned by a guy who sells you to an animal trainer who then hires you out to scientists. And you return home to stay with his animals. There’s probably a trained […]

Angella Johnson It was not the welcome South African backpacker David Martin (23) expected when he tried to enter Morocco during his 16-month adventure-packed tour across the continent. Despite having a valid visa, the University of Cape Town graduate was stopped at a military border post, marched through a minefield and forced to wait four […]

Jean-Marc Ela: A SECOND LOOK The paradigm of bankruptcy has become the context for every analysis of modern Africa’s economic and social history. Samir Amin evokes this picture: “The 1960s were marked by the great hope that we were at the start of an irreversible process of development throughout the Third World, and especially Africa. […]

He is wanted in Italy and the US, but the SAPS can’t reel in Vito Palazzolo, writes Chiara Carter Red tape stands between convicted Mafia money launderer Vito Palazzolo and an Italian courtroom. The Ministry of Justice said this week that Italian authorities asked for Palazzolo to be extradited earlier this year on the basis […]

Marianne Merten A key figure of the Cape Town gang and drug underworld has moved out of town in the face of new anti-organised crime legislation to clamp down on the profits of illegal dealings and assets bought with illicit profits. For some time Colin Stansfield, head of the drug cartel, The Firm, has been […]