Julie Frederikse has written two new additions to the Maskew Miller Longman series They Fought for Freedom, a set of short, accessible biographies of great South African opponents of apartheid. Though Helen Joseph and David Webster came from two different epochs in the fight against oppression, they shared common characteristics and a unique connection. Joseph […]

Sydney Mathibe South Africa’s witch doctors have learned the power of advertising. A cursory look at the classified sections of newspapers reveals a kaleidoscope of attention- grabbing advertisements aimed at the superstitious and the millions of dedicated muti-users. The ads urge readers to send money, and promote dubious potions, herbal and chemical mixtures and powders […]

Dave Hill World Cup He may do the least running, but the man in the number one jersey has as critical a job as any of his (active) colleagues. While South Africa’s troubles may have been solved by the inclusion of Hans Vonk, the debate about what makes a good goalkeeper rages on. The English […]

Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE I signed on to a cause a few weeks ago: a crusade for rational thinking about technology and its role in human affairs. Oddly and amazingly, just that statement alone has proven controversial. For those who see me as a pro- technology Utopian, or who are devoutly pro-technology themselves, it sounds like […]

Andy Duffy The University of the Western Cape (UWC) slapped a court order on its workers this week to snuff out an uprising sparked by its management’s cost-cutting proposals. The Labour Court in Johannesburg issued an urgent interdict against the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) and its UWC representatives, after dozens of […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD What is a thirtysomething single girl to do when she needs an escort and all her eligible male friends are out of town? Well, you could always try the personal columns, teased a colleague. She may have been joking, but images of a sexy Richard Gere wiggling his tight […]

John Owen Editors are biting fingernails and journalists are whispering in the corridors as the neck-on-neck magazine market prepares itself for the arrival of a kick- ass competitor in the form of Y, a new magazine written by young black people for young black people. The fire behind all the smoke has come into view […]

FRIDAY, 8.00PM: AN unqualified former secretary of the Mpumalanga legislature confessed last year that he stole more than R500,000 from the legislature’s Trust Bank account, the Ngobeni Commission heard on Friday. The matter was not reported to the police. Mpumalanga speaker Elias Ginindza testified that the former secretary, Alfred Mahlangu, officially confessed that he stole […]

Mungo Soggot and Tangeni Amupadhi They are one of the South African legal profession’s odder couples: Shafique Sarlie, a smart Indian attorney with neatly coiffed black hair, and advocate Manie Dempers, a former colonel in the South African Defence Force who could be mistaken for a security policeman with his balding head and piercing blue […]

Marko Saravanja THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOUTH AFRICA: FROM MINERALS-ENERGY COMPLEX TO INDUSTRIALISATION by Ben Fine and Zavareh Rustomjee (Witwatersrand University Press, R89,95) If you want to know the present you must understand the past. Ben Fine and Zavareh Rustomjee (the director of the centre for economic policy for Southern Africa at the University of […]