JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Friday 11.00pm. MPUMALANGA’S sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, was found guilty of self-enrichment and of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute by the party’s provincial disciplinary committee in Nelspruit on Friday. The three-man committee, headed by provincial finance MEC Jacques Modipane, tried Maropeng in her absence after she kept it […]

`I can’t understand it”, said Sean Fitzpatrick, “everyone’s being nice to me for a change.” Back in South Africa on a trip to promote New Zealand as a holiday destination, Fitzpatrick needs to understand one thing: people wouldn’t be half as nice if they thought he was going to run out of the tunnel at […]

Roger Southall A Second Look Your correspondent William Boot is being incautious in suggesting that Lesotho’s May election was rigged by the ruling Lesotho Congress of Democrats (LCD) (“Lesotho’s election farce”, August 7 to 13). A more careful look at the election is required. Preparations for the election began under the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) […]

Charl Blignaut On stage in Pretoria It is really only while I am hurtling along the highway back to Johannesburg from the Pretoria State Theatre that the full effect of Reza de Wet’s latest work, Yelena, begins to sink in. A leading South African playwright based in Grahamstown, De Wet has chosen to continue her […]

Many of our readers will find the pictures of famine in southern Sudan which we have published deeply distressing. Some may feel that this is a visual invasion of privacy which should not be allowed. Others may wonder whether such appeals to our consciences are not just a short-term palliative: is there not a better […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Friday 1.00PM. WITH panic growing in Kinshasa, rebel troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are reported to have advanced as far as Kasangulu, some 30km south-west of the capital. Rebel leaders in Goma said Kinshasa is now in their sights, and will fall by the end of the month, if […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 5.00pm. JUSTICE Minister Dullah Omar has said that the the transformation of the judiciary must be speeded up. Speaking on Friday after the week’s outcry over the handling of the SA Rugby Football Union’s successful application to have a commission of inquiry overturned, Omar said the judiciary’s accountability should […]

up Howard Barrell Over a Barrel While in exile with the African National Congress in Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s, I had a simple test to decide who I felt comfortable with. It was: can this person appreciate a good anti-ANC joke? If yes, the likelihood was we could work together. If not, co-operation was doubtful. […]

ROB DAVIES, Johannesburg | Friday 10.30AM. TWO more South African athletes have won gold medals at the World Athletics Championships for the Physically Disabled in Birmingham, bringing the number of gold medals won to five. Malcolm Pringle, winner of three medals at the Atlanta Paralympics in 1996, won the 1500m class 38 cerebral palsy event […]

Justin Arenstein President Nelson Mandela has ordered the country’s top investigator, Judge Willem Heath, to probe a land deal involving South Africa’s outspoken ambassador to Mozambique and former homeland strongman, Mangisi Zitha. The controversial deal allowed Zitha to buy a 5,7ha farm with two houses in the former KaNgwane homeland in 1991 for just R5 […]