THURSDAY, 7.00PM: THREE people were killed and one injured on Thursday afternoon in a taxi that was attacked between Libode and Umtata in Transkei, while three people were injured in a taxi-related shooting in Mamelodi near Pretoria. Three people have been arrested in connection with the Mamelodi incident. Police in Mamelodi fired teargas and stun […]
TUESDAY, 5.30PM: APARTHEID dirty tricks agent Ferdi Barnard’s advocate closed Barnard’s case in the Pretoria High Court on Monday, admitting that he was unable to find even one witness who was prepared to testify for Barnard. Advocate Faan Coetzee told the court that several witnesses were hesitant to testify as they would be implicated in […]
TUESDAY, 1.30PM: A REMARKABLE number of staff of the Safety and Security Ministry — including Minister Sydney Mufamadi, his driver, his private secretary, and the private secretary of his deputy minister — have all been involved in accidents while driving state-owned cars, the ministry revealed on Monday. “Good grief,” was the response of usually outspoken […]
They may look like Hell’s Angels but riders of Steel Wings club are not about beer and bluster, writes Swapna Prabhakaran On Sunday mornings they gather like outsize flies at their favourite Pretoria pub, Greenfields. Then the whole swarm – usually about 30 riders – takes off down the highway out of the city on […]
Alexandra residents take the World Bank to task over plans to expand the Lesotho Highlands Water Project We are a group of low-income residents of Alexandra township, near Sandton. We have filed a formal protest at the World Bank Inspection Panel – the equivalent of its auditor general – against the expansion of the Lesotho […]
Duncan Mackay When Josiah Thugwane lined up on Blackheath last Sunday for the London Marathon, he did so free from the worry that dogged his every footstep through the streets of Britain’s capital 12 months ago. Then the Olympic champion was racked with concern about the safety of his family in South Africa, fearing that […]
Andrew Worsdale : Movie of the week Love and Death on Long Island, a wryly observed romantic comedy, stars John Hurt as fuddy-duddy writer Giles De’ath. He works with a fountain pen; eats his meals at the same time every day; doesn’t have a television; hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years (he calls them […]
People used to go to there just to collect the postmark, but now art dealers go to plunder the region’s priceless heritage, reports Alex Duval Smith ‘The trouble with Timbuktu,” says Mohamed Galla Dicko, “is that most people think it does not really exist. The world behaves as though it were just a mythical place.” […]
John Pilger : CROSSFIRE In his fine book, The Mind of South Africa, Allister Sparks wrote: “South Africa has the widest gap between rich and poor of any country in the world for which data are available. Eighty-seven per cent of its land and 95% of its industrial holdings are in white hands. That degree […]
Tim Radford Stone Age people built the first astronomical observatory centuries before anyone had thought they did. Scientists working in the Sahara have identified a series of megaliths that predate Stonehenge in Britain and other sites by more than 1 000 years. Around 6 500 years ago, an unknown people living in Nabta, southern Egypt, […]