A paediatrician’s love of orchids led to the discovery that big doses of garlic could triumph over infection, writes Michael Nurok The Roman statesman Cicero advised that one should eat to live, not live to eat. Little did he know that more than 2 000 years later, gravely ill patients at Cape Town hospitals might […]

Shot dead at a taxi rank this week, James Zulu is more likely to be remembered as an Inkatha warlord than the great leader he could have been, writes Jesper Strudsholm The South Coast Herald once branded James Zulu “a warlord”. Zulu threatened to take the editor to court for defamation, but the paper was […]

Alex Duval Smith Evidence of PW Botha’s personal role in ordering bomb attacks and killings to thwart anti- apartheid activity was revealed at this week’s trial of the former state president. The sensational minutes of top- secret meetings in the 1980s, obtained from the national archives by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, confirm claims that […]

Education’s financial crisis is having a devastating impact on South Africa’s publishers of textbooks, writes Swapna Prabhakaran South African educational publishers face lean times as the Department of Education shifts gears, changing its approach to implementation of the new outcomes-based Curriculum 2005. While the new curriculum does require new textbooks, the department has sidestepped its […]

Despite facing stringent budget cuts, the military has paid out hefty merit bonuses – mainly to white officers, writes Mungo Soggot The Ministry of Defence is probing the armed forces’ decision to pay officers R77-million in performance bonuses, nearly all of which went to white officers of the former South African Defence Force (SADF). Amid […]

Jane Rosenthal WAY UP WAY OUT by Harold Strachan (David Philip, R42,99) It’s a strange practice this, of putting out a brand new novel, first print run of the first edition, with snippets of review-type comment already adorning the cover. Way Up Way Out has been done in this way. And it’s not just any […]

Gareth Patterson: A SECOND LOOK The hunting fraternity initially blamed the animal rights lobby for the expos of “canned” lion hunting last year. They said it was a means of tarring South Africa’s conservation image just prior to the June meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species and of dampening the Southern […]

Ferial Haffajee When Deputy President Thabo Mbeki returns from his Asian jaunt this weekend, he will bring little tangible home with him. But his visit to China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong has done an intangible good for Africa. “Mbeki’s visit has helped overcome the barrier of perception,” says Rafiek Bagus of Investment South […]

Keith Henderson Fire, fire and more fire would be an easy way to describe this year’s Rustlers Easter Festival. It became quite clear by the end of the four-day festival that tricks involving paraffin, chains, sticks and clubs with burning ends are in vogue, so to speak, as well as a healthy dose of juggling. […]

As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]