of closet Anthony Kunda Gay men and lesbians in Zambia have formed an organisation to represent their interests, despite government threats to arrest them. Gershom Musonda, project manager of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual and Transgender Persons Association (Legatra), says the country’s homosexuals face constant harassment and victimisation. “The Zambian gay community has suffered silently, living as […]

Mungo Soggot The state oil company’s efforts to discipline its former chief, Kobus van Zyl, took a bizarre twist this week when the company decided to abandon his disciplinary inquiry and replace it with an internal probe. The disciplinary inquiry’s head was from outside the Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF) and Van Zyl was allowed legal […]

Proving the `moonshine conjecture’ won Professor Richard Borcherds the maths equivalent of the Nobel prize. He tells Simon Singh about the trials of living in a world few can enter There is a – probably – apocryphal explanation for why no Nobel prize has ever been awarded for mathematics. The story goes that Alfred Nobel’s […]

Alexander McQueen asked some of fashion’s leading designers to dress people with physical disabilities. His aim? Not to change the world, but to challenge our perceptions of beauty. By Susannah Frankel `W hat do you think?” asks Aimee Mullins. “Pretty funky, isn’t it?” It is, on the face of it, just like any other studio […]

Kitchener A Sudanese MP wants one of Britain’s most revered heroes to be classed as a war criminal. Ian Black reports Britain has no plans to apologise to Sudan for Lord Horatio Kitchener’s behaviour at the end of the 19th century – a demand Khartoum may be planning to lump together with one from Washington […]

performance David Beresford `Castro is a lion,” sang the South African Communist Party choir enthusiastically. At 71, Fidel Castro cut a somewhat aged king of the jungle. Nevertheless, the comparison seemed a fair one as the Cuban leader, with grizzled mane and beard, clambered out of his Mercedes Benz in Soweto on Saturday and made […]

Donna Block Share World The wicked witch of the East is once again spoiling things in the land of Oz. The troubles plaguing Australia’s Asian neighbours has left the country’s stocks sagging and commodity prices hitting new lows. Australia and New Zealand are vulnerable to an economic downturn. Their stock markets are suffering not only […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Thursday 6.30pm. A plummeting Dow, and little help from overseas investors rocked the share and bond markets on Thursday. Traders suggested that bonds will only pick up if the rand breaks out of the R6,23 to the dollar range. The bright spot was the rising price of gold, which pushed gold […]

Andrew Worsdale `If I have to be really truthful, I can’t say a director can really know why he makes his pictures … On set, I prefer to go on like a blind man, following with the imagination of the picture to delude myself I am going in the right direction.” So said Italian film […]

Chris McGreal Jean Kambanda was bathing when soldiers burst through his front door four years ago. Rwanda’s genocide was starting and he was sure death was knocking. The soldiers nabbed him and offered him not a bullet in the head, but an invitation to lead the government – which came to oversee the slaughter of […]