Andy Duffy The daughter of a founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress has been stranded in Germany for nine years because she cannot prove she is South African. Joyce Vuyiswa Khayana’s struggle for a South African passport has been supported by sworn affidavits from high-ranking African National Congress and PAC officials. Even the president’s […]

Donna Block European markets jumped ahead. Asia hit an 11-year low. The Athens exchange has a positive outlook ahead of privatisation, while the Heng Seng has lost 2% of its value. Welcome to the stock markets of the world. What does it all mean and what is the Heng Seng anyway? The Heng Seng is […]

Who is . . . Sarah Amin? Nick Hopkins and Giles Foden The last time Sarah Kyolaba Amin commanded this much attention, her life was different. As the fifth wife of the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, she lived in splendour and travelled the world meeting dignitaries. She was even granted an audience with the […]

FRIDAY, 8.30AM: DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday added his voice to Wednesday’s criticism by President Nelson Mandela of the South African Communist Party. Addressing the SACP’s 10th annual congress, Mbeki berated the party for the ease with which it has levelled “charges of treachery” against the African National Congress, adding that the ANC does […]

Peter Makurube You would need to be an incurable optimist to believe you’d ever see Philippe Troussier smile. But he did, when Bafana Bafana played Denmark. If you blinked you probably missed it. You’d have to be as much of an optimist to have believed that Tananas, one of South Africa’s best and most successful […]

Contrary to popular opinion, speculators did not spell doom for the rand, reports Donna Block The United States Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, is due to visit South Africa in about 10 days time, and when he gets here he is not likely to be very sympathetic to the bleatings of the South African […]

Brett Hilton-Barber Racial differences between people may be a more recent phenomenon than was previously believed. In a paper presented to the Dual Congress of Human Biology and Palaeontology at Sun City this week, renowned academic Dr Christopher Stringer suggested that white skin colour probably emerged only 30 000 years ago. This is some 30 […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Golden Miles Bhudu, the outspoken president of the South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) and a former member of the African National Congress, has crossed the political floor to join Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement. Bhudu joined the ANC in 1991, but has not renewed his membership since, although he […]

Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg Pieter Toerien’s Alhambra theatre is the perfect setting for a South African staging of Alan Ayckbourne’s classic Absurd Person Singular. It’s a trademark Ayckbourne nudge-nudge wink-wink; “oh-don’t-worry- about-Tom-he’s-out-there-playing-with-Dick kind of farce”, and the three couples that inhabit the three kitchens during three Christmas eve parties in the play are […]

Brenda Atkinson I am no fan of sport. I don’t give a toss for its nation-building bumf, I begrudge it its unreserved corporate support, and it brings out the misanthrope in me. But put Bafana Bafana on the box and I’m all patriotic pride and good humour. I get butch and yell things like, “Why […]