Indian and white employees at Mangosuthu Technikon came under attack from their vice-chancellor (VC), Professor Aaron Ndlovu, last week. And Durban mayor Obed Mlaba — also chairperson of the technikon’s council — supported him. Ndlovu spoke on Thursday last week at a memorial service for the late Sandile Thusi, a former member of Mangosuthu’s council.

Deaths among children infected with HIV in Africa could be almost halved if all those with symptoms were put on a simple, cheap and readily available antibiotic, new research has established. The positive results of a study of children in Zambia, carried out by the Medical Research Council and funded by the Department for International Development, are a rare breath of hope in the pandemic.

Israel apologised to Egypt on Thursday after its soldiers fired across the border and killed three Egyptian policemen. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, called Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s President, and expressed his ”deepest apologies” for the incident and promised a quick investigation.

The world’s last major political personality cult could be fading, according to reports from North Korea. Portraits of the country’s ”Great General”, Kim Jong-il, have been removed from several prominent locations in Pyongyang, including some hotels and the People’s Cultural Palace, say news agencies and foreign observers.

The 10th anniversary of democracy is an important symbolic milestone for all South Africans, an opportunity to take stock, evaluate the past decade’s gains and setbacks, and plan for the next. On the eve of the Democratic Alliance’s congress in Durban this weekend, its leaders look at the future of the party and its challenges as the opposition, while a critic slams one of Tony Leon’s gurus.

Having turned the screws on disparate elements in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, South African mediators know about applying pressure.
The players in Côte d’Ivoire — who have made a pig’s ear out of a carefully crafted French peace deal and a hash of an African follow-up pact — are about to learn this. On Saturday President Thabo Mbeki will see Guillame Soro of the New Forces rebel movement in Côte d’Ivoire.

Towards the end of his life the American anthropologist and author, Robert Ardrey, retired to Kalk Bay. I was to get to know him for a few brief weeks. In a conversation in January 1980, he spoke with enthusiasm about “some guy up in Zululand who is saying that crocodiles have maternal instincts. I was able to tell Ardrey that the “guy in Zululand’s" name was Tony Pooley and that he was a good friend.