Andy Colquhoun Rugby Let us pause before the dogs of war are loosed at Twickenham on Saturday to consider the game’s most important personality. A person who won’t even be on the field. If South Africa were to miss out on their bid for a rare Grand Slam – and for all the bullish talk […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Police in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, including Alexandra, may have found the right ointment for their Achilles heel – carjacking. The men in blue have cut by half hijacking incidents in the past three months with an innovative crime- fighting initiative. The new plan circumvents the usual excuses about lack of manpower and resources. […]

Gregory Mthembu-Salter French President Jacques Chirac looked particularly pleased with himself when he announced progress towards a ceasefire in the Congo at the Paris Franco-African summit last week, but in reality the chances are slim. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Laurent Desire Kabila, resumed his fighting talk immediately after the Paris discussions. Rebels in […]

Ferial Haffajee Veteran journalist Allister Sparks will leave the SABC at the end of December. He announced his departure to staff this week – a move which will leave SABC’s new 24-hour news channel without a leader just two weeks after its launch. Television CEO Molefe Mokgatle on Monday sent a letter to Sparks informing […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 2.30pm. MATRICULATION students whose mother tongue is an African language will have their examination results adjusted upwards to compensate for their having to write exams in a second language, the South African Certification Board said on Friday. SACB spokesperson Fred Calitz said the new policy comes as a result of […]

Food: Ferial Haffajee There’s nothing like a steaming packet of slap (pronounced slup) chips to sate a raging appetite. Like cricket, slap chips are a great example of how the colonised took the ball – or in this case the spud – and ran with it. The potato chip, South African style, is barely comparable […]

A new survey shows that South African women are more likely to be killed by their partners than by strangers. Tangeni Amupadhi reports To reach her Lenasia home, Yasmin Fakir walks across a field where there have been several rapes and murders. But it is only when she opens her front door that she feels […]

Herman Charles Bosman’s work is now all being reissued in a definitive edition. Craig MacKenzie describes his work on Mafeking Road Recently, as the editor of the journal English in Africa, I published there for the first time a remarkable exchange of letters between the post- war giants of South African letters – Herman Charles […]

Peter Dickson Early next year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty committee will ask a feared ex-security policeman if guns smuggled from Mozambique were used to kill hundreds of people in the Transkei killing fields of Tsolo and Qumbu. TRC spokesperson Vuyani Green said controversial Superintendent Frans “Lappies” Labuschagne, withdrawn from the Robert McBride […]

He drinks herbal tea, but it is Zim Ngqawana’s music that is the most healing, writes Phillip Kakaza Some call him the most important young composer in South Africa today. He’s credited with bringing together the oldest South African musical traditions and the international avant garde to create a sound that is both local and […]