Come election time, the Delmas municipality may regret neglecting its only cricket ground and allowing it to be taken over by soccer clubs. It could also rue threats to evict a volunteer organisation helping disabled children from a government-built facility. But it will definitely suffer from its own ”Watergate” — the handling of the typhoid outbreak that hit the town between August and September.

If you are one of those people who drops off instantly into a deep sleep every night, then the chances are you inherited the ability from your parents. For those who toss and turn there is no hope: good sleep is encoded in the genes, say researchers. Hans-Peter Landolt and his team at the University of Zurich compared the sleep patterns and DNA of two groups.

The Boys from Brazil is one of Julian Savulescu’s favourite movies. That would not raise an eyebrow, were it not for the fact that his main interest as Uehiro professor of practical ethics at Oxford University is ”biological enhancement” — also known as ”the new eugenics”. Savulescu’s views on cloning and the improvement of the body have caused controversy before.

A father sodomising his son, a serial killer rapist strangling victims with their G-strings, real-time domestic violence, a hijacker who beats up his girlfriend’s father, a vigilante Zulu ibutho with a machete,explicit sex scenes … these are just some of the images in Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom’s Relativity: Township Stories, currently showing at the State Theatre in Pretoria.

Members of the Basarwa, an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers, submitted an urgent application in court on Wednesday to bar the Botswana government from seizing their livestock and preventing their people from entering the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

It is evening and the beautiful, tanned 40-year-old woman picks up her cellphone as she glides home in her Ferrari. ”I’ll be back in five minutes and I want tuna carpaccio,” she barks into the handset to her personal chef. In the back of the car, two children stare through the smoked windows as the gates of the luxury villa open.