Peter Dickson Surrounded by a depressing cocktail of shantyland and industria, its dark corridors almost endless and with stray goats grazing at its doorstep in the menacing Friday night shadow of gangsters, Port Elizabeth’s Dora Ngiza hospital is where babies are turned away to die. Every day at the hospital, battling to stretch limited finances […]

Chris McGreal The family of the executed Nigerian writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa, is at odds with the organisation he once led over plans to exhume and rebury him and eight other Ogoni activists hanged after a show trial in 1995. Saro-Wiwa’s eldest son, Ken Wiwa, has objected to the creation of a “burial committee” by the […]

Terry Bell unravels the murky past of the former Wits fine arts professor who siphoned aid funds into security police coffers, and is now in hiding in Spain Superspy Craig Williamson’s Spanish connection, Avio Barraclough (75), has gone to ground in Spain fearful of an official probe into his role in apartheid’s dirty war. The […]

Michael Finch Athletics Just when you thought that Athletics South Africa (ASA) was finally repairing the rift between administrators and athletes, it ruins all the good work. This week many of the country’s top stars had debit orders returned on car and house payments while battling to put food on the table, after ASA failed […]

Luvuyo Kakaza Review Today, unlike the 1980s, township theatre has gone beyond slogans, to the realm of everyday life. Pressing issues, like crime for example, still surface in work that remains topical, making allowance for small works of serious inclination. Sweet Chocolate, directed by Mufunanji Magalasi and written by Mike Manana, is a triumph. It […]

Riaan Wolmarans Gauteng’s party scene has recovered from its January slump with two exciting dance events planned for this month. Love and thumping beats are in the air on Saturday February 12 when Mother Productions presents From Mother with Love. It takes place at a new venue, the Warehouse Complex at 11 North Reef Road, […]

Dan Atkinson and John Cassy SHARE WORLD The Internet’s huge, hyperactive gossip and rumour machine looks almost certain to come under scrutiny from the British Financial Services Authority (FSA) amid rising concern about its power to move share prices and even to distort markets. Scams such as “pumping and dumping” – in which Internet noticeboards […]

Charlotte Denny Suddenly it seems everybody is at it. Every advert contains a Web address, and no self-respecting retailer would dream of ignoring the potential of e-commerce. The Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) has estimated that e-commerce will be worth $1-trillion worldwide by 2005 – around 3% of global gross domestic product […]

Marianne Merten The alleged bogeyman behind Cape drive-by shootings – Ebrahim Jenneker of People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) – will stand trial on 124 charges ranging from murder to malicious damage to property in the Cape High Court from Monday. For more than six months he has been moved between different Cape jails following […]

There was a good deal to commend in President Thabo Mbeki’s speech opening Parliament this month. But in one particular at least he fell woefully short of giving South Africans the reasoned leadership and guidance that the State of the Nation address is meant to embody. This is the issue of the HIV/Aids pandemic, identified […]