Most people who see Robin Williams loathe him. Sarah Gristwood asks if he’s really that bad The jokes aren’t that funny. On Albert Einstein: “There’s even a theory that his first wife came up with the theory of relativity. Which would make it the theory of relatives.” On film flying: “The harness shorts are like […]

The leading Maghrebian author, Tahar Ben Jelloun, attended this year’s Poetry Africa festival in Durban. He spoke to Stephen Gray Stephen Gray: How did you come to choose French above your home language? Tahar Ben Jelloun: I was born in Fez in 1944, in a modest and fairly traditionalist family, with Arabic as my home […]

Barbara Ludman ROADKILL by Kinky Friedman (Faber & Faber, R69,99) There have been many books featuring the author as amiable detective, once the main man in a country and western band, now ensconced in a New York loft with a cat, a good supply of cigars and a singing espresso machine. The Kinky Friedman saga […]

Alex Dodd Even a telephone conversation with gifted storyteller Antoinette Pienaar leaves you feeling like your blood’s flowing at a different pace through your veins. I’m in an office in the metropolis and she’s miles away on a farm drenched in winter sunlight, yet when we’ve finished speaking my heart is somehow beating at a […]

Julie Frederikse has written two new additions to the Maskew Miller Longman series They Fought for Freedom, a set of short, accessible biographies of great South African opponents of apartheid. Though Helen Joseph and David Webster came from two different epochs in the fight against oppression, they shared common characteristics and a unique connection. Joseph […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi A new row among senior managers has hit the SABC following recent appointments and new vacancies created in the corporation’s radio news section. The radio battle comes after the former head of the division and now deputy chief executive Govin Reddy launched a public challenge against the appointment of the Reverend Hawu Mbatha […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi The South African Communist Party politburo this week failed to reconcile its young radicals and its old guard on split nominations for the party’s highly contested leadership positions. On Tuesday, the politburo failed to come up with a single name for the party’s most contested position, that of the general secretary, between the […]

The African National Congress will have to do better in the Eastern Cape if it wants to retain the support of one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, writes Lizeka Mda The African National Congress is fortunate the elections are still a year away because were they to be held tomorrow, it seems the United Democratic […]

Chris Gordon As increasing Unita military activity is reported across Angola, the United Nations has imposed a fresh set of conditional sanctions on Angola’s intransigent rebel movement, in what is now a bid to avert serious conflict. These sanctions will come into force on June 25 if Unita does not surrender its headquarter towns and […]

Joe Hanlon A SECOND LOOK `Greater humility” is needed, admitted the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice- president, Joseph Stiglitz, in a speech in which he called for an end to “misguided” policies imposed from Washington. Stiglitz’s condemnation of the “Washington Consensus” and the conditions imposed on poor countries must raise fundamental questions about […]