Cameron Duodu Letter from the North By allowing “Eric the Eel” (Eric Moussambani, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea) to take part in the Olympics Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has done Africa a great favour. But I doubt whether that was their original intention. You don’t need to be a genius to realise that […]

Khadija Magardie Entering Dr Manuela Costa’s medical practice in a nondescript, semi-deserted building in Wynberg, near Alexandra, patients are greeted by a poster carrying a poem. It reads: “Bless the people who cross this threshold, Bless the souls who need to be here … But take away the anger; take away the hurt, Take away […]

A collection of art works currently on sale offers a good opportunity to take another look at the African art debate Yvette Gresl With all the African art works flooding flea markets, roadside stalls and curio shops, regular mortals who’d like to collect such objects often wonder how one begins to distinguish between fakes and […]

The idea that software could ever be sophisticated enough to identify pornographic images is sheer fantasy, writes Avedon Carol Moralists and Net-nanny software hucksters have put a lot of effort into convincing the public that our kids are unsafe on the Internet and that we need to put strict controls on what people can see. […]

Rory Carroll and agencies The captain and three crew members of a Greek ferry that sank killing at least 65 people have been charged with multiple counts of murder. Investigators were focusing on reports that the Express Samina, carrying more than 500 passengers, was apparently on automatic pilot minutes before it hit a well-marked rocky […]

The dream was of a personal jet-pack and not just for the high flyer. However this blue skies technology never took off David Hambling This 21st century is not what it was cracked up to be. It is not that I actually wanted to live in a gleaming glass skyscraper attended by robot butlers, and […]

friday Golf: German Masters, at 2pm on SuperSport1 (SS1/CSN) Rugby: Currie Cup, Super Eights, round two, Pumas vs Cheetahs at 7pm on SS1/CSN saturday Cricket: Second one-day international (ODI), Zimbabwe vs New Zealand, at 9.25am on SS2 Rugby: New Zealand NPC series, Auckland vs North Harbour at 6.35am, Waikato vs Canterbury at 7pm (delayed), Northland […]

Personal bests, not medals, were the order of the day for South Africa’s Olympic team Grant Shimmin It was the strangest of situations. Two South African 400m athletes had qualified for the finals of the men’s and women’s events at the Olympics, both for the first time, and each had run outside the gold medal […]

Tony Leon CROSSFIRE Retiring United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once memorably observed: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” So, too, with Crossfire (“Democracy requires wisdom too”, September 22 to 28). In order to concertina my words into his argument, Firoz Cachalia is guilty, at best, of elliptical reasoning […]

Merryman Kunene One of South Africa’s biggest Olympic disappointments came from the under-23 soccer team who failed to reach the quarterfinals after a couple of bad results against so-called weaker sides (Japan and Slovakia), and one glorious win over Brazil. “For me it is difficult to comment on the other sports and how the National […]