Peter Dickson When he’s not an international peace mediator, former South African president Nelson Mandela is extending the olive branch back home in a revolutionary farming project designed to boost rural income opportunities and create jobs. Mandela’s home at Qunu in the Transkei is one of several pilot projects under way across the Eastern Cape […]
Paul Kirk Anne Jones has lived in Wentworth all her life and she now wants out. Like her mother and sister, she suffers from asthma. As a nurse she knows the fumes she breathes in from the refinery did not give her the condition, but they do make it worse. “Sometimes, especially at night and […]
Andrew Worsdale Between 100 000 and 120 000 hits a day, and between 80 000 and 100 000 visitors a month makes Josephines at www.personals.co.za one of the most popular South African websites and without doubt the most popular dating service and adult “friend finder” in the country. You can meet people for coffee, make […]
suspects Neal Collins SOCCER So that’s it then. Both British titles wrapped up like bunnies in a sack by Easter. In England, Manchester United won the Premiership with four games to spare. In Scotland, Rangers romped it with six to play. Sky-TV executives must be in despair. They had billed St Johnstone vs Rangers at […]
John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF Everybody’s an expert on racism these days. Even people of historically racist stock (HRS for short) have a born-again take on the subject. It was supposed to be an easy-going, late-night ramble in Lusaka. I was talking to Sakala, the Nyanja-speaking Danish Viking, about When We Were Kings, the […]
Bryan Rostron Recently I sat for half an hour with a man from an NGO and hardly understood a word he said. The way his words washed over me, you might have thought we didn’t share a common language. In fact, he was English-speaking. But he talked in “NGOese”. It is striking that those who […]
Attempts to revive the Boy Scout movement in Gauteng are underway following falling membership numbers Thebe Mabanga There was a time, in many townships, when the sight of young boys clad in khaki uniforms was a common one. Boy Scouts have always enjoyed a curious and ambivalent relationship with society, soliciting admiring stares and inane […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The family and widow of a Witwatersrand University security guard who was arrested, shot and killed while in police custody in March are to sue Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete for R400 000. The family has instructed the Wits Law Clinic to demand the compensation after their son, Nicky […]
Stephanie Merritt MARRYING THE MISTRESS by Joanna Trollope (Bloomsbury) What is the point of Joanna Trollope novels? The plot of her latest involves, as you might expect, extra-marital liaisons, fraught filial relationships and the minutiae of family life, renders them utterly banal and manages to stretch this banality to fill 311 pages. Do people find […]
Connie Selebogo To spot a vervet monkey on hospital grounds is a pretty rare sight, but not at the Ga-Rankuwa hospital, north of Pretoria. The hospital is under siege from a pack of vervet monkeys that descended on the grounds in search of leftover food and some amusement. Every day at dawn, these small primates […]