South Africa’s two most senior judges warned this week that attacks on the judiciary damage the institution Khadija Magardie The warning issued by the country’s two top judges this week against attacks on the institution of the judiciary comes amid mounting concern in legal circles about the ease with which South Africans both in and […]

Peter Dickson In the week the Eastern Cape government launched its anti-corruption forum in Bisho, it emerged that several long-serving Port Elizabeth city councillors stand accused of failing to disclose their interests in companies doing business with the municipality. Port Elizabeth town clerk Graham Richards told a shocked council executive committee meeting that an undisclosed […]

Gregory Mthembu-Salter The newly established Cape Peninsula National Park (CPNA) this week shocked conservationists with its statement that there is no longer a place for most of the baboons on the peninsula. Acting manager Howard Langley said in a media statement that “just as the peninsula has lost its ability to sustain natural populations of […]

Harry Pearson Anyone who has spent time on the internet will know that it is not so much an information superhighway as a trivia megapub. You enter the cyberzone bright and early one morning. Your express intention is to garner hard facts about drug abuse in weightlifting. Instead you find yourself distracted by the information […]

Khadija Magardie A new initiative, spearheaded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and various Aids advocacy bodies, has been established to monitor potential human rights violations in clinical trials for HIV/Aids vaccines. The project is entitled South African human rights and community mobilisation intervention for HIV/Aids vaccine development and clinical trials, and is funded by […]

David Le Page Economists are never short of detractors, and the latter have jeered loudly this week following the release of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for the first quarter of 2000. The derision follows the huge disparity between the predictions of most economists, who were expecting growth of between 2,5% and 3%, and the […]

Justin Pearce Ethiopia’s breakthrough into Eritrean territory two weeks ago ended a lengthy stalemate between two once-friendly neighbours, who had first gone to war almost exactly two years earlier. In May 1998 Eritrea moved its troops into several areas of disputed territory which had up to then been under Ethiopian administration. Heavy fighting, at the […]

trial Heather Hogan The trial of Wouter Basson, which began last year, has proved the most sensational showcase of apartheid-era atrocities in South African legal history. The court has heard evidence of, among other things, how: l In 1989, Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) member Abram “Slang” van Zyl received a monkey foetus from Staal Burger, […]

Barry Streek Former homeland leader Prince James Mahlangu, appointed to a senior government post in Mpumalanga after defecting back to the African National Congress from the United Democratic Movement last month, handed the UDM a medical certificate on his departure stating he had brain damage. Mahlangu, a former ANC MP who joined the UDM last […]

Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH To anyone who takes even a rudimentary interest in African history, the name Asante stands out as one of the most valiant of the nations that attempted to halt the incursions of the European powers in the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, it was not until 1874 that […]