Illegal occupants defiantly laid claim to vacant homes in a Lenasia suburb this week. Mapula Sibanda spoke to them OVERGROWN shrubs surrounding the houses testified to desertion, but there were newspapers pasted up to serve as curtains and white crosses marked on the windows to show that people were living there. On Wednesday afternoon, this […]

Black pupils near Durban take their struggle into an Indian township. Farouk Chothia reports ONGOING violence at a black school in Amaoti, near Durban, spilled over into the adjacent Indian township of Phoenix this week with Indian pupils being attacked by black pupils. A large group of pupils from Amaoti’s Amandlethu Secondary School, some armed […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin THE arresting title sequence in Robert Redford’s Quiz Show identifies television with Kurt Weill’s acerbic song Mac the Knife from The Threepenny Opera. Although the song is given a romantic interpretation by Bobby Darin (who was a matinee idol in 1959, the year of Quiz Show), it loses none of its bite. […]

A young woman is busy teaching hardened police about the importance of early-age fixations in serial killers. Jan Taljaard reports WHEN in 1982 John Duffy embarked on a raping and killing spree that would eventually earn him the name of Britain’s Railway Ripper, initial investigations threw up a possible 5000 suspects. Two years, 18 rapes […]

Rank-and-file members of the South African Police Union want more control of the union that was allegedly created by police generals, writes Stefaans Brummer THE South African Police Union (Sapu), rival to the more “radical” Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), is battling to purge itself of a past which sources say was conceived […]

Thabo Mbeki walked the tightrope between the country’s first couple this week. Mark Gevisser reports PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela was so “fed up” with the ill- discipline and unaccountability of his estranged wife, Winnie Mandela, that he was resolved to drop her from the cabinet until persuaded otherwise by several ANC leaders, including Thabo Mbeki. At […]

THE withdrawal of sociologist Eddie Webster from the race for the post of vice-chancellor of Rhodes University has left a conservative as the only contender. To the dismay of Grahamstown progressive organisations and academics, Webster has chosen to stay at the University of the Witwatersrand. Academic sources said his work on proposed new labour legislation […]

Eddie Koch visits a northern Cape army base with land minister Derek Hanekom THE owner of a game lodge in Namibia which goes under the name “Intu Afrika”, called up the Schmidtsdrift army base last year, and asked to borrow some bushmen who could perform their ancient traditions for tourists on his farm. Schmidtsdrift army […]

A smile. A chuckle. A quip. Their lordships have begun deliberations Strange, is that laughter we hear? Justin Pearce reports on the inauguration of the Constitional Court SELDOM can a South African court have heard as much laughter as the Constitutional Court did on Wednesday, during its first day of proceedings.It was the good- natured […]