Tim Wood american notes AMail & Guardian letter-page critic believes that electricity deregulation caused California’s energy crisis and is an example of why it should be avoided when it comes to Eskom. It’s a poor deduction that relies on less than half the facts. California is in a mess because of the confluence of dozens […]

whipping boy This year’s Durban July could be substantially affected by a high court ruling long before the gates swing open at Greyville on July 7. Top trainer Mike de Kock has threatened to seek relief from the court, contending that the David Ferraris-trained Celtic Grove has been set to carry too light a weight […]

It’s been a time of guts baring for Afrikaans theatre, but though Breyten Breytenbach has failed, Pieter Fourie has triumphed Guy Willoughby Behold the guilt-tinged, rudderless state of the Afrikaner psyche at the beginning of the 21st century. This month it has come under scrutiny in two oddly undramatic new plays by venerable Afrikaans playwrights. […]

Thebe Mabanga in your ear Radio has a long way to go before it can lead the South African media in news coverage and analysis. Although newspapers rely somewhat on radio to give publicity to stories covered on a specific day, radio still depends on print media to amplify a story it might have broken. […]

FORTY police and thirty demonstrators were slightly hurt on Wednesday night in clashes during a protest by young members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority outside the Coptic cathedral in Cairo, police said. Coptic youth have been protesting since Sunday over the newspaper publication of a graphic story about a defrocked monk’s alleged sexual affairs in […]

ANTONY BARNETT and STEFAANS BRMMER, Johannesburg | Friday FOR thousands of years, members of Southern Africa’s Kung tribe have eaten the Hoodia cactus to stave off hunger and thirst on long hunting trips. The Kung people – a subdivision of the San – used to cut off a stem of the cactus about the size […]

NIGERIAN nurses on Wednesday threatened to go on strike next week to protest what they called government preferential treatment of doctors. Their representative, Nwogu Nwogu, said that the government has for too long paid attention to doctors at the expense of other health workers, and nurses will go on strike from Monday to protest this […]

NEXT month’s Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Zambian capital of Lusaka will focus on the continent’s economic challenges, a Zambian official said Wednesday. “This summit will not strive to settle wars of liberation” but would herald a “new era where economic problems will be taken up,” Sikota Wina, an emissary of Zambian […]

BELINDA BERESFORD, Johannesburg | Friday THE cost of curbing the worldwide HIV/Aids epidemic in lower-income countries will soar almost fivefold by 2005, reaching an estimated $9,2-billion, compared to current expenditure on the disease of about $1,8-billion. This compares with the estimated $20-billion a year that the United States alone spends on Aids domestically. This forecast […]

Cape Town | Friday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday a government minister will meet with the main shareholder in South African Airways to settle a row, which analysts see as a threat to the country’s privatization programme. Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe will meet on Saturday with the board of Transnet, […]