Janet Smith A trample of running girls, sandals unbuttoned and skirts pleated around them, grin and point at the silver and blue machine. They’re caught in its shimmering breeze as they stop at the fence, put their hands to their brows and start chattering like birds. The firemen laugh lazily together at the corner of […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Police are three times more likely to commit crime than ordinary members of the public, and that’s official. In its forthcoming monthly report, the Human Rights Committee says statistics provided by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi show the shocking extent of police involvement in criminal activities. Mufamadi told the National Assembly […]

Wally Mbhele Mounting frustration over the continued incarceration of Robert McBride, who has been languishing in a Mozambican jail without trial for almost two-and-a-half months, has prompted calls for the South African government to become more active in securing the freedom of its foreign affairs official. After the Mozambican authorities failed this week either to […]

Stefaans Brmmer Mathole Motshekga this week denied he was close to apartheid-era military intelligence frontman Abel Rudman – but the Mail & Guardian has documentary evidence of a meeting at the Gauteng premier’s house where shareholding in a resort development was discussed. The M&G published details a fortnight ago of Motshekga’s involvement in a series […]

David Pallister The British salesman sank with evident relief into his club-class seat as the plane prepared to take off from Murtala Muhammed airport. Doing business in humid, chaotic Lagos, even selling defence electronic equipment to the military junta, was never the easiest of jobs. In answer to the question, “So how much commission do […]

Johnny Masilela BLACK PERSPECTIVE(S) ON TERTIARY INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION edited by Sipho Seepe (Vivlia/ University of Venda, R39,90) Once upon a time a young university student lamented that as the only African (except for menial workers) he was regarded at best as a curiosity, and at worst as an interloper. The institution was Wits University, the […]

Marion Edmunds gets to grips with how people felt 50 years ago when the National Party came to power The National Party today is a shadow of its former self, publicly regretting the policy of apartheid which brought it to power in the highly charged national elections of May 26 1948. Fifty years ago it […]

South African art triumphed at a huge French show. Brenda Atkinson was there So there I was in Paris, filled with strawberries and red wine, mingling with a 2 000-odd crowd of the young, hip, gorgeous and powerful. If these people sweat, I thought, then they sweat pure CK-One. Let no one tell you that […]

TRANSFER by Ingrid de Kok (Snailpress R42,50) One can only celebrate this triumph of delicate bleakness: One by one the small refusals add up to a life. Or this rich characterisation of complex love: Mouthing under water wetly jewelled words we are acrobatic aquanauts in a chest of swords. The first half of the book […]

Phillip Kakaza It wasn’t too long ago that Zolani Mkhiva, an imbongi or praise singer, became Imbongi ye Sizwe -Ethe Poet of the Nation – when he took the podium and sang the praises of Nelson Mandela at his inauguration. Four years later, after protracted negotiations with recording companies, he has graced the nation with […]