One of the government’s more obvious setbacks the past four years has been its failure to prevent the collapse of South Africa’s criminal justice system. The police are widely regarded as corrupt and inept, as well as largely defenceless against an increasingly sophisticated criminal profession. Many of our magistrates and judges are held in equally […]

Tim Radford Early North Americans were a step ahead in the world of dress codes. The first fashion shoes – sandals, slingbacks and slip-ons – have been dated at up to 8 300 years old. The shoes, originally preserved in a dry cave in Missouri and now dated precisely for the first time, are prehistoric […]

real Dale McKinley Right to Reply It didn’t take Howard Barrell long, did it? Only just back in the country, he has wasted little time in regaling readers with his own peculiar brand of sarcasm, masquerading as informed opinion (”Pissing on the communists’ parade”, July 10 to 16). His target? Us poor old communists, whose […]

WEDNEDAY, 12.00NOON: CHERRYL KENNEDY, the white South African woman who has applied for political asylum in Australia on the grounds that she has been persecuted by affirmative action in South Africa, has lost her case. The Australian Refugee Review Tribunal on Wednesday upheld an Immigration Department ruling that she had no grounds for her claims […]

MONDAY, 2.00PM: DEPUTY Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad met a senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation official, executive committee member Faisal Husseini, in East Jerusalem on Sunday. The meeting followed earlier talks with Palestine’s planning and international co-operation minister Nabil Sha’ath and Palestinian legislative assembly speaker Hanan Ashrawi,as well as the Palestinian business association on Saturday. The […]

MONDAY, 5.00PM: AN Inkatha Freedom Party member convicted for murder for his part in the June 1992 Boipatong massacre testified on Monday before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sebokeng on the murder of a nine-month-old baby during the attack. Victor Mthandeni Mthembu, 29, is seeking amnesty for his part in the massacre in which […]

Who was . . . Moshood Abiola? Richard Synge The extraordinary life of Moshood Abiola, who has died aged 60, apparently of a heart attack, while meeting an American delegation, matches the tumultuous pageant of Nigeria’s political life in which he played such a pivotal role. Abiola first came to prominence as an accountant for […]

FRIDAY, 1.00PM: ROBERT McBRIDE, the Foreign Affairs official arrested in Mozambique three months ago on dubious gun-running charges, has released a statement explaining his side of the affair. McBride says he went to Mozambique to verify claims from Vusi Mbatha (the informer behind the Meiring report) that Alex Huambo, a former supplier of arms to […]

Chris McGreal Many will remember Chief Moshood Abiola as a political martyr denied presidential power, even though he came to prominence as an opportunist businessman, prepared to do deals with Nigeria’s soldiers until the very end. In the days before he died, Abiola had been ready to forsake his presidential claims, according to the various […]

Helen Stevenson HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD by Kiran Desai (Faber &Faber) In a small town in India, a post office official yells at his slovenly staff: “You will kindly pull up your socks and begin!” There has always been a certain buffoonish comic potential in the linguistic legacy of the British in India, a […]