She’s a South African New Yorker whose first novel is set in the Oudtshoorn of caves and ostrich farms. Shaun de Waal meets Anne Landsman In Anne Landsman’s debut novel, The Devil’s Chimney (Jonathan Ball), the Cango Caves form the central, or perhaps one should say underlying, metaphor. Their chambers and lakes, stalactites and stalagmites […]

cube farms `So the other day this 404 and his lilo walked head on into the new chainsaw consultant right in front of the cube farm on the second floor. You should’ve seen the idea hamsters prairie dog.” Confused? To translate, consult our lingo dictionary below, and keep up to date with office gossip. n […]

Tangeni Amupadhi reports on the Groot Marico farmwatch system Oom Leon du Plessis stops mending a fence on his Nooitgedacht farm in the Groot Marico to tell about the night he was robbed and almost killed. It is almost noon and time to stop work, have a sip of mampoer and take a rest after […]

Anthony Egan SOWETO: A HISTORY by Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal (Maskew Miller Longman) THE SOWETO UPRISINGS: COUNTER-MEMORIES OF JUNE 1976 by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (Ravan) The city to the south-west of Johannesburg , Soweto, has had a short but significant history. It started largely as a settlement for migrant workers to the Witwatersrand, a […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel Since this story is about the currency markets, let’s engage in a bit of speculation: you are the leader of a middle-income country of little importance to any but the people who live in it. South Africa would be a good example You are trying to transform your country. Your […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Nine-year-old Mita Molete came home from school crying a few weeks ago. She pleaded with her mother not to let her go on a school tour to Durban. Molete, whose scalp was hacked with a panga during the 1992 Boipatong massacre on the Vaal Triangle, has developed a fear of Zulus. “She does […]

From a mud hut in Transkei to the Union Buildings in Pretoria is not that far, but it’s been a long road for President Mandela, writes David Beresford Below the village of Mvezo, on the side of a hill overlooking a bend of the Mbashe River in the former Transkei, three circular mounds of earth […]

Iden Wetherell When the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Laurent Kabila paid a flying visit to Harare last week, he told reporters he was there for routine consultations with President Robert Mugabe. But the presence of Zimbabwe’s defence chiefs suggested a more pressing purpose. Mugabe is chair of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) organ […]