OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Friday 7.00pm. THE United States has airlifted former warlord and now fugitive Roosevelt Johnson out of Liberia on Friday to end a week-long standoff that began when he sought refuge inside the American Embassy in Monrovia. One helicopter swooped down on a small landing pad at the back of the sprawling […]

Peter Makarube Live in Johannesburg They said jazz is dead but we have yet to see the coffin. With the establishment of the South African Jazz Foundation comes ample proof that the hippest art form is still alive – and well. At a recent media launch, held at the Hyatt hotel, the foundation was introduced […]

Hein Marais: A SECOND LOOK Eighteen months ago, questioning the virtues of the free market was tantamount to flashing a membership card of the Flat Earth Society. Today, there’s standing room only on the bandwagon of second thoughts about laissez- faire capitalism. Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, President Nelson Mandela, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, […]

There’s a growing sense that in an unstable world, Libya’s `Brother Leader of the Revolution’ has some attractions, writes Ian Black Moammar Gadaffi was busy this month, embracing African leaders as they flew in for the lavish celebrations, held each year, of the coup that brought him to power in 1969. Without his customary comic-opera, […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel We South Africans may have scored something of a first this week in the annals of foreign policy-making. We may well be the only country ever to complete what appears to be a full-scale somersault in foreign policy and to invade a neighbouring state while our president, deputy president, foreign […]

Jane Rosenthal MOTHER TO MOTHER by Sindiwe Magona (David Phillip); UNBROKEN WING by Bridget Pitt (Kwela ) In the 1980s a cartoon figure of a stout and immovable Black Sash lady with fist held aloft, subtitled “Womandla!” was created by poet and cartoonist, Gus Ferguson. It was an inspired conjunction of black and white resistance […]

Raymond Joseph Police say Mark Thatcher will be subpoenaed as a state witness in the fraud and theft trial of officers who acted as “bookrunners” for his failed money-lending business. Police say 11 of Thatcher’s runners have been identified. At least three runners will appear in court by the middle of next month, and others […]

Robert Potts SIMPLICITY by Edward de Bono (Viking) Edward de Bono’s many, many books include Conflicts: A Better Way to Solve Them; Handbook for the Positive Revolution; How To Be More Interesting; and Teach Yourself to Think. These seem to have sold extremely well, both to human beings and also to (the apparent target audience) […]

Alex Duval Smith The smouldering remains of Lesotho, a kingdom raped of its constitutional integrity after South Africa’s heavy-handed military intervention, lie as visible proof of the post-apartheid government’s disastrous foreign policy. Political analysts believe that it is chiefly South Africa’s failure, since elections in 1994, to invent a credible role for itself in Africa […]

A school that fought apartheid is threatened with closure. John Pilger believes it should be saved Those of us banned from South Africa during the apartheid years have returning snapshots that swell the heart, offering a glimpse of what the future might be. One of mine is from a recent visit to Woodmead High School, […]