Charlene Smith King Carl Gustaf of Sweden this week knighted long-time anti-apartheid activist Horst Kleinschmidt with the Order of the Polar Star, Sweden’s highest award for foreigners. Sweden became the first government to acknowledge the incredible work over five decades of the organisation International Defence and Aid Fund (Idaf), which Kleinschmidt headed from 1979 until […]

aRonald Bergen on the life and films of Stanley Kubrick, the enigmatic and reclusive director who died recently aged 70 Over his 40-year career, the director Stanley Kubrick made only 13 feature films, yet the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his extremely slow method of working, the years of planning, the secrecy, […]

Anthony Egan AFRICA: THE TIME HAS COME by Thabo Mbeki (Tafelberg/Mafube) HOPE AND FEAR: REFLECTIONS OF A DEMOCRAT by Tony Leon (Jonathan Ball) It is election year, so anything published by a prominent politician gets special treatment, whether they deserve it or not. These two books -by the president-in-waiting and one whom many hope will […]

Chris McGreal in Lagos Of all the mysteries surrounding the capture of the Lagos “man-eater”, the fate of the missing heads is the most disturbing. Clifford Orji was caught frying up human feet and ribs for breakfast under a city flyover. Severed hands lay about the place. There was even a policeman’s helmet resting on […]

One of South Africa’s most under-resourced hospitals has been named as the research base of a new Aids drug. David Shapshak, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Aaron Nicodemus report Ga-Rankuwa is an unlikely place for an Aids breakthrough. The dusty, dishevelled hospital outside Pretoria has been almost abandoned by the health system, leaving it critically […]

OWNER of security company Excalibur, Andre van der Byl, says his business has boomed following allegations it was involved in gun running and had links with Robert McBride. He appeared in the Durban Regional Court on Thursday charged under the Arms and Ammunition Act. Excalibur allegedly supplied seven automatic weapons late last year to the […]

ROMAN Catholic priests incited Lesotho Defence Force troops to overthrow their commanders and later the government in a failed coup bid last year, according to court martial evidence heard on Friday. The evidence was contained in a military intelligence report submitted by the commander of the Lesotho army, Lieutenant-General Makhula Mosakeng. Mosakeng said priests visited […]

Matthew Krouse Down the tube `No politicians behind desks and no talking heads,” promise the producers of Real Lives, e.tv’s new 13-part documentary series aired on Wednesdays at 9pm. The first two episodes, now shown, have indeed been free of laboured political invective and emotional commentary – proving what light relief a non-judgmental approach to […]

President Nelson Mandela and first lady Graca Machel left the Netherlands on Friday for Finland.

Kevin Mitchell backs Lennox Lewis in this weekend’s world heavyweight unification bout On Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York, two big men will slug it out for the biggest title on offer, the heavyweight champion of the world. One of them, Lennox Lewis, is certain to be as happy as anyone in […]