Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH As you read this, many of my Nigerian friends who had gone into exile to escape from the wrath of the brutal dictator, General Sani Abacha, have either returned home, or are about to do so. Among them is Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in […]

Andy Capostagno Cricket It was the Somerset and England all- rounder Len Braund who refused a second benefit on the grounds that he had lost money on the first. And Bertie Buse, another Somerset man who coached for many years at King Edwards in Johannesburg, chose a three-day game at Bath for his benefit. Neglecting […]

The value of loyalty and discipline in politics is greatly overstated. As much cruelty and idiocy have been organised in their name as in the service of probably any other attribute. The camp commandant at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp during World War II; the communist who raised no opposition to the murderous purges in […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer When a team is hanging on to the slenderest of leads in a two-leg cup tie and has conceded an away goal, the last place in South Africa they want to go is the Independence Stadium in Umtata. The Eastern Cape ground is not going to be a contender when – hopefully […]

The Basic Conditions of Employment Act applies to domestic workers too, writes Belinda Beresford Labour relations, like charity, begin at home. But unlike charitable acts, proper labour relations towards your maid, gardener, chauffeur or childminder are not voluntary. Before crime and emigration became the main topics of conversation among the chattering classes, complaining about domestic […]

Mathews Phosa believes he is doing what he promised the people who voted for the ANC, writes Wally Mbhele He sees himself as a crusader against officials who have given his province the reputation as the most corrupt in the country; a victim of an unfair and persecuting media, even a fall guy for the […]

Bart Luirink A bronze bust depicting Dutch Nazi collaborator Jacob van Tilburg has been consigned to oblivion in the basement of the University of Pretoria (UP), but controversy is still raging about his art collection on display on the campus. The collection was in all likelihood stolen from Dutch Jews deported from Holland during World […]

Ferial Haffajee This week’s rate cut is a drop in the ocean. Wednesday’s decrease in the repo rate will have little significance for wider South Africa because commercial lenders are unlikely to follow suit immediately. But the small cut – one-quarter of a percentage point – in the interest rate at which the Reserve Bank […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.00am. TWO local golfers, looking for their first wins as professionals, set new course records of nine-under 62s at the Royal Johanesburg West on Thursday, when they shot their way to the top of the second-round leaderboard in the Gauteng leg of the Vodacom series. Ryan Dryer (26) and John […]

battleground On October 23 1942, the battle of El Alamein began. James Ambrose Brown, a young soldier, carried into battle a diary in which he recorded the horror of all he saw This year there will be no old soldiers at the graves of comrades who died at the battle of El Alamein. Like those […]