Bread Heidi Clark Staff at a school for 250 former juvenile delinquents and street children in the Eastern Cape won a court interdict last week, preventing an attempt by the project’s trust to close it down. The children were facing eviction at the end of September from the institution which has been both their home […]

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 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 5.00pm. UNITED Democratic Movement national secretary Sifiso Nkabinde on Friday expressed “shock” at Thursday’s closure of the Richmond police station, saying it is “strange” that the action was taken only after police officers accused of complicity in the violence demanded proof of the allegations against them. “The UDM finds it […]

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 […]

William Boot Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s intervention this week in Lesotho’s election crisis may prove too little, too late to head off disaster in the beleaguered kingdom. Mbeki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo and Minister of Defence Joe Modise secured agreement from both the governing Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and the country’s major […]

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) […]

Phillip Kakaza Jabu Khanyile is a composed and impassive man whose self-image is clearly important to himself and his audiences. He is a self-taught, spiritual singer who has been influenced by religion and African tradition. He was an active member of the Apostolic Zionist church at an early age and reckons he was caught by […]

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 […]

Matthew Krouse On the air in Johannesburg In the 1920s, when radio transmitters were switched on for the first time all over the world, live music was the main attraction. The immediacy of the medium made people feel so modern, so in-with-the-times. Suddenly, you didn’t actually have to be there, to be part of what […]

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 […]