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 […]
THURSDAY, 4.00PM: ANGOLA’s Unita rebel movement has seized the small town of Piri on one of the main roads north-east of the capital, Luanda, raising the spectre of renewed civil war. The government reported on national radio that the Unita fighters took Piri on Tuesday, killing five people, following an initial assault on Sunday. The […]
WEDNESDAY, 4.00PM: THE investigation into the circumstances surrounding the air crash that killed Mozambican president Samora Machel 12 years ago took a new twist on Wednesday when a Mpumalanga scrapyard owner claimed that wreckage in the possesion of police did not come from Machel’s plane. African Eye News reports that Greg Duffey, of Duffey’s metal […]
MONDAY 6.30PM THE trial of former state president PW Botha, in the dock for refusing to respond to a subpoena from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was adjourned until August 17. Judgment is expected on August 18. At the resumption of the trial on Monday after a few days’ ajournment, the state prosecutor, Bruce Morrison, […]
MONDAY 6.30PM: THE rebels fighting in Guinea-Bissau said on Monday that they would be willing to end the revolt if President Joao Bernardo Vieira resigned. The rebellion broke out last week, triggered by the dismissal, for trafficking guns to Senegalese rebels, of Brigadier Ansuman Mane as defence force chief of staff. A spokesman for the […]
FRIDAY, 5.30PM: THE Mozambican judge handling the case of detained foreign affairs official Robert McBride has been threatened by people he believes to be South African agents who have ordered him to nail McBride or ”otherwise you’ll be in trouble”. A reliable source has informed the Mail & Guardian that Judge Carlos Caetano, who has […]
Adam Mars-Jones THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS McNULTY by Sebastian Barry (Picador, R110) Sebastian Barry’s new novel is so full of magnetising beauty that it all but harasses a reader into submission. You can try to protest, to say, “I’m a reader and you’re a book, can we not keep this on a professional basis?”, but […]
Carlton Centre in downtown Johannesburg is flooded by hundreds of young people during weekends. They file around the circular ring at the entrance on the first floor where they peer admiringly at displays of shiny new BMWs two floors below. Others mill around the corridors, visiting shop windows and restaurants. The scene is repeated in […]
This is a conflict as strangely conducted as it is pointless in origin, writes David Hirst in Zalambesa Zalambesa is a natural pathway for armies. It lies on what, when Eritrea was still a province of Ethiopia, was a main highway between Addis Ababa and Asmara. Set in spectacular landscape of deep gorges, fantastic rock […]
Wonder Hlongwa While thousands of South African youths are lingering in jails, on street corners or at home, hundreds of others are putting their skills and talents to work to improve the lives of their communities. “Social responsibility” has become the catchphrase for dozens of grassroots projects started by small groups of youths, many of […]