Andy Capostagno Rugby When Geoff Cooke was England’s coach in the glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he had a phrase that used to come out whenever journalists believed that a player had been unfairly discarded. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” he would say. It is interesting to speculate whether […]
Ann Eveleth The highest bidder for resort parastatal Aventura instructed attorneys this week to force Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau to back down from her decision to choose the buyer before a parliamentary debate on the sale. Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee this week also accused Sigcau of “pre-empting the activities of Parliament” and […]
Andy Duffy Sibusiso Bengu hates the spotlight, and it’s not hard to see why. Pinned down last week on prime-time TV, the minister of education resorted to pathos to get himself off the hook. “It isn’t my fault,” Bengu pleaded, after being confronted with yet more evidence that education is going down the tube. It’s […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga The African National Congress in the Northern Province this week met one of its allies, the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), in a bid to iron out differences between Cosas and MEC of Education Joe Phaahla. Relations between Phaahla and Cosas hit an all-time low last week when the provincial chair […]
ruins Amid Renamo ruins At sunrise, Chief Nchiri invokes the ancestors. Sitting with the chief around a sacred pakassa tree are seven men, barefoot and bare-chested. Nchiri has a white cloth draped around his waist. Nchiri explains to the ancestors that builders from Beira want to demolish the ruined houses of Maringu. Many people died […]
David Shapshak Now that Pakistan has shown the world that it could quietly purify enough plutonium for the five nuclear devices it detonated recently – and probably enough for many more – attention is turning to how to divorce nuclear weapons from nuclear power plants. And while conventional nuclear power stations have had a bad […]
FRIDAY 4.30PM: THE African National Congress has welcomed the conviction of former Civil Co-operation Bureau assassin Ferdi Barnard, but has called his comments likening his cause to that of President Mandela “presumptious”. After being sentenced to two life terms and 63 years for murder, attempted murder and fraud, Barnard said: “When President Mandela got sentenced […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Superintendent Jan Brink religiously abides by the proverb that the early bird catches the worm. He says it is the only way he can catch crooked cops napping. So he was up before the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning, travelling to Soweto, Roodepoort and Krugersdorp. His team arrested police in a surprise […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi A new wave of violence is threatening to uproot a fragile peace that has held together for more than four years in the East Rand squatter camp of Phola Park. The recent outbreak has been characterised by assassinations and taxi ambushes in the area, resulting in more than 20 deaths and scores of […]
Shaun de Waal Ken Barris has won the R50 000 M-Net Book Prize in the English category for his novel The Jailer’s Book, published by Kagiso. The win was somewhat unexpected by the author, who said, “Iwas surprised – and grateful for the acknowledgement, bearing in mind how long it took to get the book […]