The two most senior African National Congress officials in the Free State have been shunned by their supporters on the eve of the party’s preparations to elect new provincial leadership. ANC Premier Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and the provincial chair, Zingile Dingale, appear to be facing the chop. None of the 10 Free State ANC regional branches […]

Suzanne Wilton and Sasha Nagy Canadian fugitive Patrick Steven Ryan’s ties to extreme right-wing groups in South Africa have become part of a Calgary police investigation into his role in the violent armed robbery of an armoured car last March. Ryan, whose connections to white- supremacist groups are also part of the investigation, visited South […]

Paul Theroux often makes enemies of those he writes about. Now he has written about VSNaipaul, once his close friend. Tim Adams reports Paul Theroux has had more than one existence. “You have as many lives as you want,” he says. “But you have to take them. You have to be up to it. The […]

forgiveness There was something awfully satisfying about that klap Gideon Nieuwoudt got on the back of his head this week. For those who missed the story as told by the South African Press Association, Nieuwoudt – a former security policeman particularly notorious in the Eastern Cape – had gone to the Port Elizabeth home of […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Remember Musa Myeni? He was the Inkatha Freedom Party firebrand who once threatened to unleash 150 000 Zulu impis on Gauteng to deal with township residents. That was during the violence in the early 1990s between IFP-aligned hostel dwellers and youths on the Reef. Seven years later, he has substituted his political ideology […]

Belinda Beresford The sisters are doing it for themselves these days, both in South Africa and across the world. Rather than settling for a traditional role as the power behind the throne, increasingly women are reaching and grabbing the reins of power directly. Female economic clout is growing – internationally women make up 40% to […]

Hazel Friedman Where there’s smoke there isn’t always fire. But there could possibly be a free air ticket. This is what panic-stricken passengers discovered this week after their flight was twice aborted as a result of a fire alert on board. Passengers at Johannesburg International airport had boarded their Virgin Atlantic aircraft en route to […]

for Savimbi Tangeni Amupadhi A former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) agent named as the ring-leader in the theft of arms from military bases is now said to be organising mercenaries for Unita. Johan Niemoller, said to be the leader of Die Volk, whose members allegedly stole weapons from two military bases in the Free State, […]

Brenda Atkinson On show in Johannesburg The venue that hosts Holdings: Refiguring the Archive is the vast, arched, high-ceilinged former engineering block at Wits University. The spacious room in which the show is installed has 1970s-brown formica floors, odd built intrusions into space and the comfortable sepia of use. It’s an appropriate space for an […]

Fumane Diseko hit the streets to find out if sisters have felt the changes of the past four years Sam Canham (30), unemployed, from Durban `If a woman has been divorced, she should not pay taxes because they are the bread winners in the family and, at the end of the day, they have nothing […]