Pat Sidley YOU have dropped off your precious child at her first school and you imagine that as well as educating her it will take good care of her. But you are likely to have second thoughts if you read the indemnity form many schools require parents to sign. At their worst, these forms require […]

General Johan van der Merwe’s alleged meddling in Third force investigations is the real reason behind his resignation, reports Stefaans Brummer POLICE Commissioner General Johan van der Merwe’s announcement last week that he would retire at the end of March was the result of pressure by Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, well-placed sources say. […]

Morne du Plessis is a popular choice as manager of the South African rugby team, but we haven’t heard the last of Jannie Engelbrecht RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE is one fact Morne du Plessis cannot have failed to arrive at: the managership of the South African rugby side can be either a sudden springboard or […]

Gillian Slovo remembers a very different funeral of her mother, Ruth First, who was killed in a bomb blast THE morning after her death, I woke early. Not from her typing but from the lack of it. I walked with my father by the seaside. We didn’t talk. As the day began, we drove to […]

Bronwen Roberts THE Rhodes University Council has been accused of using “dirty tricks” to hijack the selection of the university’s next vice-chancellor. The allegation comes from the Forum for the Democratic Transformation of Rhodes (FDTR), a group of community-based organisations, in response to a council decision to restructure the selection panel. In December the council […]

CINEMA: Digby Ricci IF Mike Figgis’ The Browning Version does not entirely destroy the poignancy and subtlety of Terence Rattigan’s remarkable short play, it cannot be said to have failed to make the effort. Rattigan’s original is an uncompromising study of misconceived love turned rancid, of failed idealism taking refuge in self-caricature, of all the […]

The 3 500 amnesty applicants will remain shrouded by secrecy if a controversial Bill is passed. Gaye Davis reports A CABINET compromise allowing Truth Commission hearings on amnesties to be heard behind closed doors has set the stage for a major showdown between the government and non- governmental organisations — and could lead to a […]

Eddie Koch braved the generation gap and took his daughter to see Roxette IT’S Saturday night at Ellis Park and a swarm of adolescents hover around the turnstiles. The man at the gate eyes my receding hairline. “Tickets?” he asks, although the subtext of his query is written in the baffled look on his face: […]

Accusations of leaks to the police and links to an army propaganda unit are at the centre of a row at the SABC, write Mark Gevisser and Stefaans Brummer SABC television faces a fresh internal controversy over spying in the newsroom — and the revelation that the new acting editor of Agenda was the commanding […]

Jan Taljaard in Pretoria THE new chief of the army has encountered a serious problem since moving to Pretoria to take up his new post: the gymnasiums in Pretoria only open at 5.30am. “No man, that’s much too late,” says Lieutenant-General Reg Otto. Gesturing towards the rather forbidding facade of Army HQ, he remarks: “We […]