Alex Brummer In an eloquent gesture, designed to underpin development in Uganda – the first of the poorest countries to receive some debt forgiveness – the World Bank advanced the government of President Yoweri Museveni a grant of $75-million this month to support universal primary education across the country. The move demonstrates just how far […]
Shaun de Waal CD of the week The Bassline in Melville, Johannesburg, has proved itself to be one of the city’s most reliable jazz joints, perhaps even its best. Everyone who is anyone in South African jazz has played there, and this CD, Jazz at the Bassline (Sheer Sound), collects 12 works by this country’s […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Gangs have triumphed in Westbury – Johannesburg’s equivalent of the Cape Flats ganglands – after promises of big business and politicians have come to naught. In recent weeks four men have been slain in gun fights – an event familiar to this dirt-poor community which, for decades, has enjoyed the notoriety of having […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Police are three times more likely to commit crime than ordinary members of the public, and that’s official. In its forthcoming monthly report, the Human Rights Committee says statistics provided by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi show the shocking extent of police involvement in criminal activities. Mufamadi told the National Assembly […]
Wonder Hlongwa The offices of three southern Cape newspapers have been burnt to the ground in an apparent revenge attack for reporting on the activities of gangs in the Hangklip area. The offices of the Hangklip Herald, Hermanus Herald and Gansbaai Herald were set alight in the early hours of last Monday morning. A petrol […]
Phillip Kakaza African music The sound of a marimba drifts out of Guguletu’s St Gabriel’s church in Cape Town where Ayanda Hollow, a budding musician, is conducting music lessons. The tinkling sound is just a hint of what is happening behind the concrete walls. Hollow’s vision of a vibrant mobile school of African music has […]
Frank Keating Cricket After their ultimately rootless and fidgety show in the West Indies, England’s batsmen this year could be forgiven a collective sigh of relief and a presumption that the home waters will be far less choppy. If so, they have another think coming. Allan Donald is pawing the earth at the end of […]
Andy Duffy Psychiatric patients treated and released by Western Cape health authorities have killed seven people over the past 18 months, including two children, amid an apparent collapse in the system set up to monitor them. The former patients, all from the high- security forensic unit at Cape Town’s Valkenberg hospital, represent a small proportion […]
Noam Chomsky The current call for international debt cancellation is welcome, but debt does not just go away. Someone pays, and history confirms that risks tend to be socialised in the system mislabelled “free enterprise capitalism”. The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon the borrowers and lenders. Money was not borrowed by assembly plant […]
`I’m riding high upon a deep depression,’ sings Garbage’s Shirley Manson. But the band’s tunes are exhilarating, cutting-edge rock. Caroline Sullivan reports The Brit Award for best female artist always goes to some pleasant dullard (Gabrielle, Eddi Reader and this year’s winner, Shola Ama, spring to mind) who barely impinges on one’s consciousness the other […]