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 […]

Andy Duffy The head of African studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has downed tools amid a racially charged dispute over the content of the university’s new foundation programme. Professor Mahmood Mamdani, director of the university’s Centre for African Studies, has withdrawn from the programme. A public seminar has been called on the […]

Brian Wafawarowa Opinion The current crisis in education poses one of the greatest threats ever to long-term development, peace and reconciliation in South Africa. The unheard truths about the atrocities perpetrated against the South African child through the denial of a decent education are as grievous as what has emerged at the truth commission. The […]

Suzy Bell Woodstockian and music collector Dave Marks may be from the wild flower-child generation, but he’s no Durban Poison whingeing hippie. He’s the dynamic managing director of Third Ear Music and he has kept meticulous archives of live recorded music over the past 30 years. Now it is starting to be released through an […]

Malcolm Hacksley SOLSTICE by Don Maclennan (Snailpress/Scottish Cultural Press, R49) Don Maclennan is intensely respectful towards words, his own and those of others, and uses them remarkably sparingly. The subjects and ideas in these poems call forth a spontaneous response, but the Maclennan response is rigorous in its self-control. Perhaps it is true that “songs […]

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 […]

Bongani Siqoko Soccer Orlando Pirates midfield sensation Steve “Chippa” Lekoelea could see his childhood dreams become a reality this year. Lekoelea, who is gunning for a place in the Bafana Bafana squad to take part in the World Cup finals in France, could also land a contract with Dutch football giants PSV Eidenhoven. “When my […]

Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON At our peril we are all ignoring another fine example Dr Nkosazana Zuma has given us of audacious democratic management skills. Especially when it comes to applying discipline to insolent apartheid-residual control bodies, Nkosazana leads the way. As they say in the good book: if thine hand offends thee, cut it […]

Anna Borzello in Kampala A coalition force of Ugandan rebels, Sudanese government troops and former fighters of ousted Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko is operating from bases in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Garamba, in the north-east of Congo, borders Sudan to the […]

Jarvis Cocker is a latter-day folk hero in Britain. He talks to Caroline Sullivan about his and Pulp’s new album Jarvis Cocker is one of rock’s great kitchen-sink lyricists, so it was fitting that our first meeting took place in a kitchen. It was late 1992, at a party in a south London council flat. […]