Charlotte Mathews The South African Red Cross, the largest humanitarian organisation in the country, is struggling with a financial crisis that it hopes can be resolved within the next few weeks. If not, a wide range of aid projects will be jeopardised. Mandisa Kalako-Williams, vice-president of the Red Cross, said the organisation’s fixed assets were […]
A cellphone service provider has spent R15-million on upgrading Alexandra police station and magistrate’s court Ntuthuko Maphumulo It is a typical busy scene as you drive into Wynberg towards the Alexandra police station and magistrate’s court. There are many people going to the taxi rank, and around the rank are the makeshift stalls of hawkers […]
Louise Stack and Paula Soggot South Africa’s criminal justice system is in crisis. The crime rate is high and the prisons are overcrowded. The prosecution rate is low and courts are backlogged. The number of cases being prosecuted has been dropping since the mid-1980s. The declining number of cases prosecuted indicates that case backlogs are […]
The Menlyn Park Shopping Centre has been given 60 days to comply with safety regulations Roshila Pillay In the week that Makro in Woodmead, Johannesburg, was razed by a fire, the Menlyn Park Shopping Centre in Pretoria was found to be a fire hazard. The R800-million complex, which sees an average of two million people […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION I am not by nature a violent man. The excesses of my physical reactions to being grandly pissed off are confined usually to the slamming of doors, loud and vivid cursing and the occasional attack on inanimate objects. I once heaved a miscreant typewriter out of an SABC third-floor window and kicked […]
Liverpool_s fast-maturing striker could make the difference in the FA Cup final Neal Collins The good news for Liverpool fans going into Saturday_s fascinating FA Cup final against Arsenal at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff is this: Michael Owen looks unstoppable. The bad news? That rugged Red rearguard of Sammi Hyypia and Stephane Henchoz allowed […]
Paul Kirk As HIV/Aids and apartheid-era town planning take their toll on cemetery space, Durban may soon have nowhere to bury its dead. “We have a problem. While old-style town planning has played a role, HIV/Aids is making the situation far worse,” says Royal Ntombela, director of cemeteries and crematoria in the Durban Metro Council. […]
Paul Kirk Unfortunately for Director Henry Manzi, the newly appointed head of the Durban Metro Police, he can choose his friends but not his relatives. In the latest edition of Metro Beat, a free magazine given to Durban ratepayers, Manzi admits to having no close personal friends. He is quoted as saying: “Friends might ask […]
Stuart Jeffries The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (Penguin) Once, in Portugal, Alain de Botton found that he could not have sex with his girlfriend. It could have been a humiliating moment, but, fortunately, a few months earlier he had read the 21st chapter of the first volume of Montaigne_s Essays. There Montaigne […]
Andrea Burgener food It_s a great favourite with vegetarians and the less texture-phobic, but tofu is still a much maligned ingredient, with many seeing it simply as an animal protein substitute. Understandably, viewed as an alternative to flame-grilled cattle loin, the standard flabby, white blocks of fresh, untreated tofu appear to stand no chance on […]