Senegal are drawn to play the opening game against France Simon Kuper We can already predict most of the next World Cup: the vilification of the coaches, footballers disgruntled at missing their summer holiday, and one of the five usual suspects winning the trophy. In fact, it will be such a familiar event that we […]

Group B, made up of South Africa, seeded team Spain, Paraguay and Slovenia will be based in Korea. Korea is a peninsular country, with rugged mountains, that dangles from the south-east corner of Asia. What the Koreans lack in natural resources such as oil and other minerals they make up for in technology and business. […]

The Kimberley Process campaign to stop trade in conflict diamonds is swinging into gear Mungo Soggot The South African Diamond Board has set up a special office in Kimberley to monitor “conflict diamonds” amid speculation that the diamond town has become a key laundering point for illicit gems from war zones like Angola. Abbey Chikane, […]

Barry Streek The much-heralded two-day grilling of the arms deal investigators by Parliament’s public accounts committee has turned out a damp squib, with little of significance emerging. Facing Parliament’s public accounts committee, Auditor General Shauket Fakie admitted he had submitted the investigators’ draft report to the Cabinet but said only he and Speaker Frene Ginwala […]

The traffic police officer who blew the whistle on the “dog cops” says he has been the target of threats and derision, but would do it all again, reports Khadija Magardie Johan Venter remembers the smells of a braai wafting through the yard of the Brakpan house he had driven to with a colleague on […]

The government should look at the science and not the myths perpetuated about nevirapine, reports Belinda Beresford If South Africa wants to save 70000 children a year from a premature death, then the duststorm of confusion about the use of anti-retroviral drugs to prevent pregnant women from passing the HI virus on to their babies […]

It is heartening to see that the African National Congress and the government are speaking out on Zimbabwe. Less heartening, however, is some of the analysis. Perhaps the worst distortion is the comment by ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama that the main source of economic problems in Zimbabwe is ”subsidies”. This reinforces a suggestion by the […]

It is good to see in Gavin Heath’s letter (November 23) that somebody cares what the South African National Defence Force buys, but he does not seem to have read my comments closely. He writes that I did ”not even begin to address … why the politicians patently ignored the South African Air Force recommendation […]

THE New National Party in Gauteng on Thursday called for more appropriate sentences, including castration, for men who rape and abuse women and children. NNP leader Johan Kilian said: ”Men who rape are not men and unworthy of the God-given physical and emotional attributes associated with normal manhood. ”It is therefore appropriate that sexual offenders […]

Parties involved in the asbestos legal battle have broadly agreed on a UK20-million settlement. However, Northern Cape premier Manne Dipico and his Northern Province counterpart Ngoako Ramatlhodi said on Friday there had been no settlement. ”We have come back…hopeful that the end is very near,” Ramatlhodi told reporters. He said one of the main hitches […]