With the high crime rate, South African drivers are increasingly signing up for breakdown cover, reports Jacqui Pile It’s a South African nightmare – being stranded on the side of the road with a flat tyre, or even worse, being involved in an accident far from home. Breakdown and emergency cover is increasingly being considered […]

Q&A Durban musical icon Roderick “Ricky” Stewart Gass has a passion for poetry, music and charity. His long and chequered career has taken him from a Durban orphanage into the police service of Rhodesia; from chart success and stadium fame back to Durban, where he now runs an animal welfare charity shop and plays music […]

CD of the week The Artist’s name was Prince, and he was funky. And then, due to a combination of legal problems and indiscriminate releases, he wasn’t. Since his dispute with former label WEA over the rights to album masters, his funkiness diminished even as his output increased. A new LP seemed to appear every […]

Frelimo leader Joaquim Chissano can expect to win Mozambique’s presidential election, but the Parliament poll is another matter, writes Chris McGreal Mozambique’s first freely elected Parliament spent four years wringing out a new Constitution. It was agreed that the flag, with its Kalashnikov and soviet star, would have to go, along with the national anthem. […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Police in the Eastern Cape are incapable of reaching crime-ridden villages because of bad roads in the impoverished province. Serious crimes like rape go unreported because communities are unable to get to police stations, which are mostly situated kilometres away from the remote areas. But this situation is expected to change […]

declining Your articles (November 19 to 25) about the problems in tertiary education should have mentioned the declining standards in the quality of people who are being appointed as professors in our universities, and the lack of any professional body that can punish them for misconduct. A case in point occurred recently in Pietermaritzburg. An […]

Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH There are certain glorious moments that define our common humanity. Such moments demonstrate vividly that despite our different colours, social backgrounds and geographical location, we can meld our disparate spirits together and fight for the survival of our beautiful planet. One such defining moment occurred in 1984/1985 when Bob […]

Alois Brunner sent at least 129 000 Jews to the death camps. Serge Klarsfeld, the French lawyer who helped track down Klaus Barbie, is determined to bring him to trial. Jo Glanville reports Many people remember Alois Brunner. Philip Vock saw him yelling in the yard of Drancy transit camp, on the outskirts of Paris, […]

MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday 11.30am. THE fraud case against high-flying mafioso Vito Palazzolo was postponed on Friday morning in the Cape Town Regional Court until February 11 next year. Palazzolo, out on R500000 bail, was arrested earlier this month by the elite Scorpions police unit for fraud relating to false information he gave […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Friday 9.50am. POLLS for the country’s second democratic elections opened in Mozambique on Friday with President Joaquim Chissano expected to win re-election, but possibly lose control of parliament to the former rebel movement Renamo. The two-day presidential and general elections, the second democratic polls since Mozambique’s independence in 1975, began early […]