OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kinshasa | Sunday 6.30PM. AS European governments flew military aircaft to Kinshasa to evacuate their nationals, a South African Air Force Boeing 707 arrived at Waterkloof air base near Pretoria on Sunday morning carrying more than 100 people, three dogs and a cat from the capital of the embattled Democratic Republic of Congo. […]

Karlin Lillington The Internet may have been created with the goal of global compatibility, but technology companies are turning a vision of harmony into a battleground over proprietary standards. Last week, the Software Publishers Association, an industry lobby, suggested companies meet later this year to agree on basic technical standards. The proposal came as a […]

Elizabeth Wurtzel First Person In late June, Time magazine ran a story illustrated with the faces of Susan B Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, pictured in grave black and white. Next to the likeness of this righteous triumvirate was a colour photograph of Calista Flockhart aka Ally McBeal, above the red-lettered, alarmist question: is […]

Wally Mbhele A former African National Congress member who was convicted in 1988 of the gruesome murder of four women considers himself abandoned by his party. Of the six people convicted in the case, four – including the ringleader – were given political amnesty in 1991. Another, Absalom Kobela, was released on parole last year. […]

Roger Southall A Second Look Your correspondent William Boot is being incautious in suggesting that Lesotho’s May election was rigged by the ruling Lesotho Congress of Democrats (LCD) (“Lesotho’s election farce”, August 7 to 13). A more careful look at the election is required. Preparations for the election began under the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) […]

Ferial Haffajee A South African multinational has patented the potent part of dagga and is selling it locally. Elevat – a brand owned by Pharmacare – is being hailed as a wonder drug for its treatment of the symptoms of cancer, Aids, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. This exposes the contradictions in South Africa’s policy […]

the bears Donna Block Fasten your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy ride. The market chaos we have been witnessing this week is the result of Japan’s dithering with its economic policy. Japan, which not so long ago was the economic envy of the Western world, has plunged into recession and its economy is […]

Liese van der Watt On show in Johannesburg Barricaded Bryanston seems a fitting backdrop for the first South African exhibition of expatriate Philip Badenhorst, who has been living, working and teaching in Antwerp for the last 21 years. His is an unfamiliar aesthetic – European perhaps – in its detached refusal to engage the exterior […]

of Ooze This is the first newspaper interview he’s given for 20 years. What’s Stephen King got to be afraid of? Peter Conrad reports To be Stephen King is a traumatic fate: his head serves as an incubator for the world’s bad dreams. His face – currently bare of the beard behind which he hibernates […]

A war is brewing over alleged favouritism in the SABC’s commissioning procedures, writes Ferial Haffajee Independent television producers believe that the SABC secretly gave a multi-million-rand contract for breakfast television to a favoured firm while pretending to be taking submissions from its rivals. Questions are being asked about the role played in the deal by […]