WISDEN editor Matthew Engel said on Thursday he is quitting the job at the cricket almanack for at least a year because he is tired of having to write about England’s “relentless failures.” “I have been obliged to edit Wisden against a background of failure. This is not failure on the part of the almanack […]

Jubie Matlou The Department of Home Affairs has instructed a Cape Town woman to have her sex certified by a district surgeon after her complaint that the department arbitrarily changed her gender on her identity document. The apparent mishap occurred when Georgia Kinghorn lodged her application for an identification document nine years ago. She only […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni One of South Africa’s most prominent liberal voices, Sheena Duncan, has resigned from the Human Rights Commission Trust in protest at the inquiry into racism in the media. Duncan, a stalwart human rights activist, was attached to the Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) fundraising wing. She says she has been dismayed by […]

Peter Dickson In a move the police have codenamed Operation Beetle, a squad of 200 armed public order officers has been deployed to Uitenhage to keep the peace after car-maker Volkswagen’s sacking of 1E300 factory workers. Police hope Operation Beetle will prevent further incidents of post-strike intimidation that has already resulted in the hospitalisation of […]

Windows 2000 has hit the shelves, and many computer users will be wondering whether the time has come to upgrade. Before you dash out to spend a fortune on the latest code from Redmond, however, pause to consider whether Bill Gates’s latest offering is really for you. Firstly, the hype around this release has largely […]

Howard Barrell Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel played the ball deep into the private sector’s court with his budget speech on Wednesday. He showed that he had succeeded in getting the public finances into their best shape in decades and in creating an outstanding environment for business to take the economic lead, to invest for […]

Sasha Sanders I like the Seven Elevens. I really do. I like that I can walk up the road and buy milk or chocolates in the middle of the night. I like that I can buy a drinking yoghurt on my way to work early in the morning. And I like that they bake really […]

Shirley Kossick THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO WOMEN’S WRITING IN ENGLISH edited by Lorna Sage (Cambridge University Press) The material in this guide consists of over 2 500 entries – from a 300-strong panel of contributors – simply set out in alphabetical order under each author’s name. Key titles (such as Jane Eyre, To the Lighthouse […]

Khadija Magardie Dr Werner Bezwoda, South Africa’s top chemotherapy expert who has admitted to faking groundbreaking breast cancer trials, conducted his experiments on more than 100 indigent black women without their formal consent. Bezwoda made his bombshell admission this month after investigators from the United States flew to South Africa to verify his research, which […]

New tax concessions to non-profit organisations are close to tax deductibility for all donations Barry Streek The non-profit sector achieved a significant – although still incomplete – victory in this year’s budget with the announcement of tax concessions to non- profit organisations by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel in his budget speech. His announcement stopped […]