Glenda Daniels Loyalty to a company, together with lifetime employment, is a thing of the distant comfortable past. This worldwide trend is particularly pertinent in South Africa where retrenchments are rife. More than one-million jobs have been lost over the past decade according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). But managers still […]

analysis Pallo Jordan Hegel once wrote that a political party becomes real only when it becomes divided. This dialectical statement will strike some as odd, but its profundity lies precisely in its paradoxical nature. Provided that it is not brain dead, as a political movement grows, its inner contradictions inevitably begin to unfold. But as […]

Hoping for the prevalence of principle in politics is a bit like expecting the lion to lie down with the lamb: it’s a lovely idea, but lousy as a prediction. We on this newspaper, however, persist in the naive hope that principle will prevail; and we have not hesitated to make of it a demand. […]

BOOK REVIEW Peter Robinson JONTYINPICTURES(with text by Andy Capostagno) Viking This is, as the title suggests, Jonty Rhodes in pictures. Jonty with his shirt on, Jonty with his shirt off, Jonty batting, Jonty fielding and, a rare one this, Jonty fielding. In essence it’s a book for members of the Jonty Rhodes Fan Club (those […]

spirit level Cedric Mayson The telephone exchange in Heaven has been suffering from overload. Both United States President George W Bush and Osama bin Laden have been using their hot line to God on an hourly basis. Israelis and Palestinians both report direct contact on high. Christians and Muslims in Nigeria are fighting for fibre-optic […]

Khadija Magardie “It is said the measure of the quality of a democracy is the state of its prisons but I say it is through the diversity of its media,” says veteran journalist Anton Harber, the newly appointed head of the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism. Although in terms of diversity Harber gives […]

Jaspreet Kindra The New National Party’s fears of being outmanoeuvred by the Democratic Party in the Democratic Alliance were raised by NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk in the party’s provincial structures as early as March this year. This emerges from the minutes of a meeting of the NNP provincial executive committee in the Northern Province […]

Mungo Soggot The family of African National Congress stalwart Thomas Nkobi has implicated ANC heavyweight Joe Modise in an allegedly fraudulent ploy by a businessman embroiled in the arms scandal to use Nkobi’s name in bids for defence contracts. Shabir Shaik, whose Nkobi Holdings company was raided last month by the Scorpions as part of […]

Marianne Merten The chance discovery of two hidden cameras and a listening device in the Cape High Court has again put the spotlight on the state’s conduct in prosecuting five high-profile members of People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) for the 1996 murder of Cape gang boss Rashaad Staggie. Only three months ago state prosecutor […]

The residents of one of the Cape’s most popular coastal towns are working together to find solutions to conflict Tracey Farren Muizenberg, the once-grand town near the point where two seas meet, is back from the dead. This time it has a blacker face and speaks a multitude of languages. Writers, artists, tradespeople and refugees […]