I was very interested in Professor Loyiso Nongxa’s article on Wits ("Ngxe!", September 30). For those ex-Witsies, like me, who were privileged white students in the 1980s at the height of apartheid, it was eye-opening to read such an honest account of just how excluded and alienated many of our fellow black student felt about their years at Wits.

One does have to sympathise with Jacob Zuma when he complains of being made to feel like a hounded activist of the apartheid days, the way the various warring branches of the State Gendarmerie go about things when fixing to throw the book at a private citizen these days.

While allegations of forensic bungling in the Brett Kebble and Constable Frances Rasuge cases have made headlines in recent weeks, the reality is that the criminal justice system is ill-equipped to handle forensic evidence, particularly in sexual offence cases. South Africa has arguably the world’s highest incidence of violence against women.

Scientists working in Antarctica have discovered an alarming rise in sea temperature that threatens to disrupt populations of penguins, whales, seals and a host of smaller creatures within a few decades. The new study shows the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by more than a degree since the 1960s

The story of Europe’s pampered cows is a familiar one but always worth retelling. Each head of cattle in Europe gets a subsidy from the taxpayer worth ,20 a day at a time when half the world’s population — three billion people in all — scrapes by on an income of less that that.

Europe is on high alert after Greece became the first European Union country to confirm a case of bird flu. Greek Minister of Agriculture Evangelos Basiakos reported the case on a turkey farm on the Aegean Sea island of Oinouses, near the coast of Turkey, on Tuesday last week.