After leading the digital music revolution, Napster’s former fans won’t flock back when it relaunches, says Edward Helmore Six months ago anyone with even a casual interest in technology couldn’t avoid Napster. News of the company had moved from the business pages to the front page as the digital music revolution became a cultural phenomenon. […]

Mungo Soggot The heads of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Scorpions have been exchanging letters about their strained relationship after fresh claims by police that the elite unit hijacks cases from the men in blue. There has long been rivalry between the Directorate of Special Operations (or the Scorpions) and the police, […]

David Macfarlane The Eastern Cape Department of Education has spent more than R1-million of taxpayers’ money on a fruitless 18-month campaign to transfer nine teachers against their will to other schools. The Labour Court has now found in favour of the teachers and ordered the MEC for education and the department’s superintendent general to pay […]

The only arrests at Bredell were for indecent exposure. On Thursday night the squatters were left at the mercy of the elements Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Bongani Majola and Khadija Magardie The early morning mist hanging over Bredell, Kempton Park, on Thursday made visibility difficult. But when trucks arrived and disgorged a few hundred men, […]

A SECOND LOOK Belinda Beresford Poor South Africans can take anti-retroviral drugs to combat HIV as effectively and safely as patients elsewhere in the world, local researchers have proved. A study released this week flies in the face of local and international justifications for withholding antiretroviral drugs from South Africans. Such arguments have included cost […]

Henrietta Mqokomiso is taking on the City of Johannesburg after she was evicted from her home Nawaal Deane The Legal Resources Centre is preparing a landmark legal battle on behalf of Henrietta Mqokomiso, who was evicted from her house in Alexandra township three weeks ago. The Mail & Guardian reported last month on Mqokomiso’s plight […]

Thabo Mohlala State prosecutors are to receive huge salary increases backdated to January 1, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna has announced. This year prosecutors protested against their salaries and working conditions by embarking on a series of go-slows, adding to an already deteriorating problem of a backlog of cases across South Africa’s […]

A SECOND LOOK Mazibuko K Jara Last week’s interview with Tony Leon, the egoistic political representative of dark forces of reaction and backwardness in our society, exposes the real Democratic Alliance (“Leon and hungry”). Its agenda seeks to undermine fundamental transformation of society in favour of the impoverished black majority. For example, early in the […]

Wilhelm Disbergen Party van Ons: Die Homeros Leesboek compiled by Danie Botha (Homeros) No story can grip the reader if there is no honest investment from the writer in the subject matter. With all the writers in this book openly gay and writing for a gay reader, most of the narratives seem at least semi-autobiographical […]

THE World Bank has approved a $6,3-million credit for Tanzania to rescue a rare species of toad threatened by a hydropower station. The Kihansi spray toads’ survival depended on the spray of the Kihansi falls, but the delicate habitat conditions began to evaporate with the building of the 180 megawatt hydropower station in Tanzania’s southern […]