Dullah Omar has come off second-best in his battle with the gay and lesbian community, write Charl Blignaut and Swapna Prabhakaran The gay and lesbian community is claiming victory in its battle with Justice Minister Dullah Omar. The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality says Omar has dropped his opposition to the removal of […]

Alex de Waal In June 1993, a Belgian soldier serving with the United Nations in Somalia put a gun to the head of one of my Somali colleagues and threatened to shoot him. At the time I was investigating the war in Somalia: that the residents were living in fear of the peacekeepers came as […]

Rowley Leigh : Moveable feast Although I first ate and enjoyed polenta at a dinner party many years ago, I never got around to cooking it myself until the current vogue first started in the early Nineties. But the stuff I came up with in the kitchen was hardly the stuff of dreams, and came […]

Robert Kirby : Loose Cannon I adopt as the subject for my sermon this week the recent decision by the Western Cape’s leading prophet, Hernus Kriel. Kriel has announced that as far as he’s concerned, the democratically imbued people of the Western Cape have every right to express their opinions on whether or not the […]

Marion Edmunds The parliamentary session ended in acrimony this week as opposition parties rallied around Pan Africanist Congress firebrand Patricia de Lille. She has become embroiled in a fight with the party after accusing some of its top officials of spying for the apartheid government. The National Party’s Jacko Maree yesterday walked out of the […]

The South African navy is underequipped, unappreciated and underfinanced writes Donald G McNeil Until a year ago, the strike craft SAS Joe Masego was called the Kobie Coetsee. Coetsee, the former minister of defence, is still alive but the South Africa that named ships after apartheid-era leaders is not. Joe Masego, a corporal in a […]

FRIDAY, 9.10AM: DOCTOR Khumalo made his comeback debut for Kaizer Chiefs and inspired the “Phefeni Glamour Boys” to a 2-0 victory over Wits University in a Premier Soccer League match in front of close to 25 000 spectators last night. The game was won in the middlefield where Khumalo did all the running and passing. […]

FRIDAY, 8.45AM: SPRINGBOK selectors have named the squad to play in the game against the French Barbarians in Biarritz on Tuesday. Coach Nick Mallett selected Western Province star Percy Montgomery to play at fullback — his natural position. “Until last year Percy played virtually all of his rugby at fullback. He has been moved around […]

Wally Mbhele President Nelson Mandela travels to Mpumalanga this weekend and is expected to douse the blazing row sparked by his reported insistence that provincial Premier Mathews Phosa step down from the African National Congress race for deputy presidency to make way for KwaZulu-Natal leader Jacob Zuma. And as a compromise, Phosa is expected to […]

Marion Edmunds A former state consultant has offered to help the government trace billions of rands he claims to have smuggled into offshore bank accounts for the apartheid regime. Dr Arnold van Eck is believed to have told the government he was responsible for spiriting away loot for the National Party government into bank accounts […]