The Boks are settling in by sticking to their traditional way of playing the game Andy Capostagno It is a strange business when one home win can make so much difference to a team. Suddenly the talk is not of the impossibility of winning away from home in the Tri-Nations, but of the local support […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter For the first time in South Africa, a world title fight will take place behind closed doors. Ahead of his possible match against Philip Ndou in October, Cassius “The Hitman” Baloyi will defend his World Boxing Union featherweight title against Jorge Paredes of Argentina at the Carousel next Wednesday. The bout will […]

The turmoil in Zimbabwe has been caused by Robert Mugabe’s opportunism analysis Jonathan Steele It may be no accident that the latest outbursts of thuggery in Zimbabwe have flared up in Chinhoyi. The first fatal clashes in the black nationalist uprising after Zanu, Robert Mugabe’s liberation party, turned from civic protest to armed struggle against […]

Chris McGreal reports from Doma, where white farmers are under siege They see it as their Kosovo. The last few dozen white farmers left in a sprawling patch of northern Zimbabwe have fallen back on tactics learned from the Rhodesian bush war three decades ago, but without the guns. From before dawn until after midnight […]

Paul Kirk From June 1 last year to July 4 this year, 106 police were dismissed from the South African Police Service in KwaZulu-Natal. Seven of them were convicted of murder. These figures were released last week by the minister of safety and security in response to a question in Parliament about how many police […]

Striking National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and Hulett Aluminium reached a wage agreement on Thursday afternoon. The company said the parties had agreed to an 8,1% wage increase for the highest-paid workers and nine percent for the lowest. Thousands of Numsa members embarked on a strike on Friday after a wage dispute between […]

3500BC: Abstract signs; paper made from palm trees; oil and soot for writing 1184BC: Torch telegraphs transmit the fall of the town of Troy (fire signals) 360BC: Water telegraphs store detailed information transmitted by smoke signal AD500: Indian astronomer Arya-Bhatta develops a system of decimal numbers 1794: C Chappe (France) develops an optical telegraph with […]

RUGBY Andy Colquhoun in Fremantle The press call them pofferbaadjies and they hunt in packs. You’ll find them wherever the Springboks are playing, wandering the streets and filling the bars. A pofferbaadjie is a Springbok camp follower and the name comes from the padded green Springbok jacket that is the de rigueur uniform of the […]