Jonathan Watts in Tokyo `AT first I wasn’t sure if I ought to. After all, everything was so valuable. But once I got started … well, I just let rip and it felt fantastic.” When Mr Watanabe, who describes himself as an ordinary Japanese businessman, and three of his female colleagues entered the stress- relief […]

Rehana Rossouw A MAJOR breakthrough was made by the truth commission at its Cape Town hearing this week when policemen began confessing their involvement in the killing of the “Guguletu Seven”. Superintendent William Liebenberg, former head of Cape Town’s terrorism detection unit, admitted Vlakplaas operatives had been central in a security police operation in 1986 […]

Thousands of Batswana could literally see their livelihoods dry up before their eyes, reports Ruaridh Nicoll A UNITED STATES company has offered to build a factory in Namibia if it receives a contract to supply pipe for a controversial project designed to drain water from the Okavango River, which feeds the Okavango Delta in northern […]

Alleged serial killer Moses Sithole’s wife this week helped end their relationship where it began, reports Joshua Amupadhi THE love affair between alleged serial killer Moses Sithole and his wife, Martha Ndlovu, was conceived in prison, the Pretoria Supreme Court heard this week. The 35-year-old Ndlovu’s testimony was helping the prosecution to send Sithole (32) […]

FOR the Ethiopian pilot who crash-landed his hijacked, crippled plane off the Comoros at the weekend it was a case of third time unlucky. Twice before 42-year-old Captain Leul Abate had been hijacked – on domestic Boeing 737 routes in 1995 and in 1991. On both occasions he managed to talk the ”softhearted” hijackers around. […]

violence Former 32 Battalion members have approached the truth commission with information on the bloody pre-election train violence. Peta Thornycroft and Eddie Koch report MORE than a dozen battle-hardened members of the former 32 Battalion are applying for amnesty for their role in the grotesque violence on South Africa’s commuter trains in the run-up to […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy IN a first interview since he changed publications, Nigel Bruce spoke frankly about his new role. What do you plan to do with Finance Week? I plan to make it a rip-roaring success in the business arena. We plan to cater for those readers with disposable income at the top end of the […]

The old bones of slavery -on which Cape Town was built – are rising to the surface. Mike Nicol, this week’s guest writer, speaks to a group trying to deal with this legacy ON a traffic island in the middle of Cape Town’s Spin Street is a low, round cement memorial. An inscription in English […]

poachers Eddie Koch IT was the week in which conservationists launched a series of missions to save not the white rhino or an endangered species of whale but thousands of poisonous scorpions, hairy baboon spiders and swimming crabs that were plundered from Mozambique in an effort to smuggle them out of the country through South […]

Duncan Mackay AT least four positive drug tests taken at the Olympic Games in Atlanta are yet to be made public, according to an expert on testing. Only two positive tests were reported from athletics events at this summer’s Games, which were hailed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)president Juan Antonio Samaranch as among the […]