Andy Capostagno GOLF This has been an Oedipal year for professional golf. Before the new millennium was ushered in we knew Tiger Woods was good, but we didn’t know how good. Now Ernie Els has summed up the talent of the man by admitting that every other pro golfer on the planet is living in […]

rights Liesl Gerntholtz There can be little doubt that women have made great strides since 1994. We have seen a large number of laws put into place to empower women and improve their status. As Nohlanhla Mjoli-Mncube says: “Gender equality is receiving more attention than in any other period in the history of South Africa. […]

Neil Williams HATE NO MORE by Arthur Maimane (Kwela) This novel reflects a reality that creates ripples of destruction – ripples of destruction that occur both in the characters in the novel and the reader, who reacts with horror to some of its events. It examines the madness created by ideology. In present-day post-apartheid South […]

Howard Barrell over a barrel I have spent several days this week trying to understand the basis on which Thabo Mbeki says Tony Leon is a racist. I have read, reread and read again the speech in which Mbeki did so – the second Oliver Tambo Lecture, delivered in Johannesburg last Friday. I have enlisted […]

cut off James Hall A Swazi man who instructed a traditional healer to cut off his wife’s clitoris has been fined R120 by a traditional court – a fine his wife, who almost bled to death, ended up paying. The case has sparked debate about the judgement of conservative elders who hear cases involving abused […]

Barry Streek The Office of the Auditor General eventually had to foot a bill of R6,5-million to clear its name in the inquiry by the public protector into a claim by former minister of minerals and energy Penuell Maduna that the accounts watchdog covered up the theft of R170-million of oil. The current Auditor General, […]

Barry Streek Although Cape Town has grown significantly faster than other metropolitan areas during the 1990s, the scale and seriousness of the challenges facing it represented “a loud wake-up call” to all its citizens and stakeholders, the local unicity commission has said. A bleak scenario for the unified Cape Town, to be formed later this […]

Cedric Mayson Spirit level All our religions are imports. Christianity originated in a Jew from Galilee and Jerusalem. Numerous variations of it reached Africa after journeying through centuries of adaptation in the tortuous politics and economics of the Mediterranean, Europe, the Americas, and colonialism. Six hundred years after Jesus, Islam began in a small community […]

kill me’ A Witbank lawyer claims he is on a farmer’s hit list because he is a ‘big white communist’ and that there had been attempts on his life in the past Thuli Nhlapo The South African police’s special investigating unit, the Scorpions, is investigating a case of a Witbank lawyer who claims he was […]

Neal Collins CRICKET Brian Lara might need an eye operation at the end of the West Indies current series against England. The world’s highest-scoring batsman, who bounced back to form with a match-saving century at Old Trafford, suffers from tyrigium – a condition which causes a “skin” to grow over the eyeball. The disease – […]