Cut-price drugs: A major drug company announced this week in New Jersey, United States, that it would cut the price of its Aids drug Stocrin to less than R10 a day in poor countries that are hardest hit by the pandemic.

I am inspired to write this article (in ebullient defence of our worthy and misunderstood presidential representative) by the quite unseemly attacks made on his character and intellect in last week’s <i>Mail & Guardian</i> ("Mbeki’s malaise goes deeper than Parks").

Newspapers and television continue to seethe with yet more uninformed comment on the matter of the so-called HIV/Aids crisis. I cannot but sympathise with the frustrations of our Department of Health in its lonely and audacious crusade against this killer virus.

Malegapuru Makgoba’s angry outburst about the cynical exploitation which has taken place around the dying child, Nkosi Johnson, spoke loudest in its subtext. People of unpretentious sensitivity have writhed in shame at the media junket that has been made of this child’s impending death.

Former apartheid police files on Dumisa Ntsebeza, the former chief investigator of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, are among several that have disappeared from the safekeeping of the South African Police Service since 1998.

South African Tomas Scheckter has secured the top drive he was looking for in next year’s Indy Racing League championship.

Orlando Pirates finally started their Castle Premiership campaign at their new home ground — the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace on Wednesday night with a 1-0 win over a disappointing Manning Rangers.