BODY LANGUAGE Robin McKie Doctors are developing artificial wombs in which embryos can grow outside a woman’s body. The work has been hailed as a breakthrough in treating the childless. Scientists have created prototypes made of cells extracted from women’s bodies. Embryos successfully attached themselves to the walls of these laboratory wombs and began to […]

President Thabo Mbeki should just keep his mouth shut, leave Zimbabwe alone and divert his energy towards saving the rand. Mbeki is so pompous he is now acting god to the suffering Zimbabweans and we should pray to him until we run out of prayers before he can whisper something to Mugabe. After all, it’s […]

comment Itumeleng Mosala The report of the national working group led by Saki Macozoma is simply a disgrace. It is an intellectual disgrace, a political disaster and an educational catastrophe, especially with regard to the rights to higher education of black people in general and African people in particular. Above all, though, the report is […]

Nine HIV-positive people, who are taking part in anti-retroviral drug trials in the Cape, tell their stories in internationally acclaimed photographer Gideon Mendel’s focus on HIV/Aids in South Africa My name is Nontsikelo Zwedala. I am from Cofimvaba in the former Transkei. It is a poor rural area and there are no jobs. I have […]

Khadija Magardie For many an archive conjures up the image of ageing men, their spectacles covered in a thin film of dust, spending their days hunched over documents in dark attics and basements. Today, however, the field of archive studies has been injected with a new dynamism, particularly in post-apartheid South Africa. The opening-up of […]

Eastern Cape: Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare to merge, with a main base in East London. The merged university to take over the University of Transkei’s (Unitra) medical school; the rest of Unitra to close. University of Port Elizabeth and Port Elizabeth Technikon to merge; so too Border Technikon and Eastern Cape […]

South Africa’s water and sanitation policy fails to stem the tide of infection comment Edward Cottle and Hameda Deedat The death of 260 people and the infection of about 150 000 others in South Africa makes the current cholera epidemic the worst in the history of the country. The prevalence of the water-borne disease, however, […]

Q&A BOBARNO Riaan Wolmarans Bob Arno is a world-travelling pickpocketting artist who steals wallets, lifts watches and even slips the tie off one’s neck without breaking a sweat. He is in South Africa to present his stage show at Carnival City with the help of his wife, Bambi Vincent. Where are you originally from? BA: […]

Pierre du Bois A former human rights commissioner has accused police of harassing people working near Parliament and blocking access to their workplaces during the opening of Parliament last Friday. After a row with office workers, police allegedly planted barricades in front of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) building on Spin Street […]

The publication of Farmers’ Monthly for subsistence farmers in South Africa could be a blessing for rural economic upliftment and empowerment in South Africa (“Agricultural magazine to target rural farmers”, February 8). In Guatemala and Honduras about 45 000 farmers have used low-cost regenerative agricultural technologies to triple maize yields to two to 2,5 tons […]