Tamar Kahn As the rand lurches into the land of Monopoly money, lawyers are among the few people still smiling. Not because they had the foresight to invest in foreign currency, but because they see the bony fingers of bankruptcy collecting record numbers of clients. Bankruptcy has an ominous ring, bringing to mind Dickensian scenes […]

Stephen Gray recently attended a conference in Botswana in honour of South African writer Bessie Head, who settled there Gaborone, June 17-18 Few remember the first round of this event. In April 1976, when she was still alive and with only half her work done, Bessie Head was invited here to the University of Botswana. […]

disruptions’ Heidi Clark Community leader Freddie Brown says the 350 “squatters” who have made their home under the tall pine trees on a hill in Wilderness have lived in the area since the 1920s and feel they have a right to be there. The setting is idyllic, but for the fact that they are forced […]

Nicky Barker KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service officials are deeply concerned about the future of the lion population in their flagship Hluhluwe-Umfolozi game reserve. The 80 lions left have been diagnosed with bovine tuberculosis (TB), an exotic disease introduced in the past 50 years by cattle imported from Europe. There is no cure for wild animals […]

Tim Radford Early North Americans were a step ahead in the world of dress codes. The first fashion shoes – sandals, slingbacks and slip-ons – have been dated at up to 8 300 years old. The shoes, originally preserved in a dry cave in Missouri and now dated precisely for the first time, are prehistoric […]

One of the government’s more obvious setbacks the past four years has been its failure to prevent the collapse of South Africa’s criminal justice system. The police are widely regarded as corrupt and inept, as well as largely defenceless against an increasingly sophisticated criminal profession. Many of our magistrates and judges are held in equally […]

real Dale McKinley Right to Reply It didn’t take Howard Barrell long, did it? Only just back in the country, he has wasted little time in regaling readers with his own peculiar brand of sarcasm, masquerading as informed opinion (”Pissing on the communists’ parade”, July 10 to 16). His target? Us poor old communists, whose […]

WEDNEDAY, 12.00NOON: CHERRYL KENNEDY, the white South African woman who has applied for political asylum in Australia on the grounds that she has been persecuted by affirmative action in South Africa, has lost her case. The Australian Refugee Review Tribunal on Wednesday upheld an Immigration Department ruling that she had no grounds for her claims […]

MONDAY, 2.00PM: DEPUTY Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad met a senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation official, executive committee member Faisal Husseini, in East Jerusalem on Sunday. The meeting followed earlier talks with Palestine’s planning and international co-operation minister Nabil Sha’ath and Palestinian legislative assembly speaker Hanan Ashrawi,as well as the Palestinian business association on Saturday. The […]

MONDAY, 5.00PM: AN Inkatha Freedom Party member convicted for murder for his part in the June 1992 Boipatong massacre testified on Monday before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sebokeng on the murder of a nine-month-old baby during the attack. Victor Mthandeni Mthembu, 29, is seeking amnesty for his part in the massacre in which […]