As I lay face down next to my husband, David, with our hands and feet tied up, I thanked him for six years of marriage and three children. Despite pleading with Thabang* not to harm my family, I feared he could still shoot my three-year-old son, who was sleeping on the bed, my mother and my five-year-old twins, all of whom I could see. Thabang, still wielding his silver gun, told Jabu* where to find our ATM cards, while he dialled a number on his cellphone.

Eid al-Fitr — the festival of fast-breaking, which falls at the end of Ramadan — arrived faster than I had expected. On Friday, the last day of the fast, work passed in a blur and then it was time to leave for my family’s home in Durban. Soon after I was being smothered in hugs by my siblings — and it was time for Eid.

Confident insider predictions about who the University of Cape Town would appoint as its next vice-chancellor have proven to be wide of the mark. The UCT council will announce today that Max Price takes over the reins when current vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele’s second term comes to an end in June next year.

Pete Bullimore will never forget the day he opened his front door to a French spy. The spy, he recalls, was disguised as a social worker. “My wife and I had applied to become foster carers, but when the social worker turned up, I was warned that she was actually a spy. It was the first of many destructive, frightening and uncontrollable voices from within that began to bombard my life,” he recalls.

A struggling behemoth hamstrung by bureaucracy and underfunding is how doctors at Chris Hani Baragwanath describe the country’s largest healthcare facility. Last week photographs of babies in a cardboard box at Bara prompted the national and Gauteng departments of health to announce the appointment of a surgical strike management team to look at ways of improving the running of the hospital.

International research has shown that households can save as much as 10% of their annual electricity bill by reducing their ”phantom” power or standby power consumption. But South Africa has no research examining this energy- sucking phenomenon and shows little interest in the international community’s moves to curb standby power waste.

President Thabo Mbeki has told the nation in the past that if anybody has evidence of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s involvement with organised crime figures they should bring it to him. Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the same. People are afraid to speak out.