James Wood Experience by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape) Experience is a beautiful, and beautifully strange book, and it is unlike anything one expected. One feared a trough of plaint: either a sad, Gosse-like reckoning with the father; or an angry, journalistic reckoning with those journalists who have hunted Amis from tooth to tooth. But Experience […]

communist Dale McKinley Crossfire I have been expelled from the South African Communist Party for being a committed, critical communist. That is really the gist behind the SACP central committee’s decision to throw me out of the ranks of the organisation, no matter the cleverly argued rationalisations presented by Jeremy Cronin (“Setting the ‘free thinker’ […]

A fight for the mineral-rich Richtersveld is pitting a small community against the state and its diamond mine Alexkor Barry Streek Three high-powered legal teams are squaring up the in the remote Northern Cape town of Kubus for one of the country’s most significant land claims battles. Communities in the Richtersveld are seeking to have […]

Ntuthuko Maphumulo soccer On paper Carlos Queiroz is one of the best coaches ever to set foot in South Africa. He is known as the “professor” in Portugal, but despite his outstanding achievements he was not well known in Africa until world ruling body Fifa recommended him to the South African Football Association (Safa) as […]

Khadija Magardie A Free State school principal who wrote acid testimonials for a group of matric pupils has dashed the hopes of the youngsters of studying further or getting jobs after school. The letters of reference from the poisoned pen of the principal of Diphetoho High School, in Botha-ville, near Kroonstad, conclude with the principal’s […]

The wicketkeeper’s desire to play for South Africa is in contrast to other players’ apathy Peter Robinson You really have to hand it to Nic Pothas. After waiting for what must have seemed like most of his life to play for South Africa (or most of the 1990s, anyway) he was finally given his chance […]

Tracey Farren A small group of residents is trying its best to halt what is otherwise an extremely successful housing project in Vrygrond, the Western Cape’s oldest squatter settlement. It is not completely clear what the motive is behind the murders and threats that mar the steady stream of brick houses going up among the […]

David Gleason The Oppenheimers have made news in South Africa for the best part of a century and Harry Oppenheimer’s death last week was no exception. Indeed, it became an excuse for media excess. Not that any of this was undeserved. On the contrary, Oppenheimer and the mining and industrial combine he fashioned played a […]

Glenda Daniels Voting at this week’s congress of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) revealed a significant ideological rift when the position for general secretary was only narrowly lost by leftwinger Dinga Sikwebu. Sikwebu, national education officer at Numsa, lost to Eastern Cape regional secretary Silumko Nondwangu by a very small margin […]

innovations MP3 is currently synonymous with Internet audio, but few people realise that it’s actually a proprietary standard. Not one that its owners – Fraunhofer et al – have been charging for till now, but proprietary nonetheless. That doesn’t mean that you as Ms Average User are likely to find a bill in the post […]