South African Aids patients who took part in drug trials have been dumped by the company that used them. Ruaridh Nicoll and Mungo Soggot report MORE than 150 Aids patients in South Africa were encouraged into a drug-testing programme run by the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche after Johannesburg Aids experts falsely claimed they would be […]

THERE is a local link to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation – researcher Olga Visser, who recently announced she had a treatment for Aids, has received funding from the organisation for her work in the field of cryonics. Visser and other researchers based at the University of Pretoria last year demonstrated their research at Alcor, […]

There will be no grand release when the truth commission’s final report is tabled, writes Antjie Krog THE commissioner spreads the photos on the table. A slope of tamboekie grass, a wind- blue sky, some fresh soil. “He shows us the place … we dig … we find red topsoil mixed with black subsoil … […]

FINE ART: Dennis Mair AT an event that took place a few weeks ago, at the Obz(scene) Cafe in Observatory, Andrew Putter set up for a work-in- progress. It was a performance piece where he invited family, friends and people off the street to pass around and fit on a set of false teeth, while […]

Steady shifts are happening as mainstream South African radio hones in on an increasingly competitive market Hazel Friedman on Radio 702 PERCEPTION is reality, reality is a mind thing, and minds tend to change. Understand this principle and you’ll get a handle on the law governing 702-land and the drastic programme changes that took place […]

fund Mungo Soggot A TOP official in Gauteng’s Housing Department has confessed to stealing more than R8-million from the province’s low-cost housing kitty. Senior accountant Louis Botha handled the province’s disbursements from the National Housing Fund – the central reservoir of funds for the government’s low-cost housing drive. But lax controls within the provincial department […]

ANDREW WORSDALE previews a moving new radio documentary commemorating Youth Day A MASTERFUL radio documentary, The Story of June 16th , begins with a police loudhailer: “This gathering under section 48 of the Internal Security Act is defined as a riotous gathering and you are all ordered to disperse.” With the sound of gunfire laid […]

act Busi Moloele NEXT time you’re in Witbank, look carefully between the giant forms of the iron-smelting factory, the electricity power-stations and the gangling steel factory. There, huddled in a space named Kwaguqa, you are likely meet an intrepid band of environmentalists who are trying to make a difference. In 1994, a group of standard […]

The South African Association of Youth Clubs is changing direction again – this time it aims to motivate young people to take charge of their lives. Busi Moloele reports ‘NO, I definitely don’t agree with the label ‘the lost generation’,” says Mokoka Seshabela. “Many young people are on the margins of society – they are […]

MADAM & EVE, South Africa’s most successful comic strip ever, celebrates its fifth anniversary this week. The strip was first published in The Weekly Mail. Madam (a Johannesburg northern-suburbanite) and Eve (her “domestic maintenance assistant”) have won the hearts of millions as they journey through the rocky landscape of the new South Africa while keeping […]