South Africa is encountering an influx of illegal immigrants who constantly plunge it in a state of crisis and instability. Concern has been expressed by prominent figures, the defence force, vendors, the unemployed and parents. The influx is destructive. It ushered in an era of substance abuse and internecine violence due to drug trafficking and […]

Sarah Baldwin : Gymnastics The era of the waif in gymnastics, epitomised by the sprite-like form of Nadia Comaneci and a chorus line of other Tinkerbells, could be over. The world championships in Lausanne this week are the first at which female competitors will have had to have turned 16 during the year of competition. […]

A letter leaked to the media accusing top Transnet executive Macozoma of theft has proved false, reports Ann Eveleth Suspended Transnet executive director Joe Ndhlela’s allegation linking the transport parastatal’s managing director, Saki Makozoma, to the theft of containers from the Port of Durban are false, according to police and justice officials. Ndhlela’s lawyers leaked […]

Hazel Friedman In the days leading up to the results of the Olympics bid, Cape Town must have felt pretty much like America did during the 1945 presidential race between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. But unlike the Chicago Tribune that published the erroneous headline poster DEWEY WINS, before the final vote was counted, Cape […]

As Olympic fever hits Cape Town, residents are still divided on whether the Games will be good for them or not, writes Andy Duffy Patrick is sitting with his friends under a bird crap-encrusted statue, watching through bleary eyes as the metal skeleton of a giant podium slowly takes shape on Cape Town’s Grand Parade. […]

FRIDAY, 12.30PM A UN transit camp for refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo was raided before dawn on Thursday by government soldiers who herded almost all the several hundred refugees to the nearby airport and flew them to Rwanda. The UN High Commisson for Refugees described the incident as: “The soldiers surrounded the UNHCR […]

contested Gustav Thiel Three Pretoria prostitutes, Ellen Jordan, Louisa Broodryk and Christine Jacobs, plan to petition the Constitutional Court later this year to legalise their business. Opposing their application, Pretoria’s attorney general will cite a recent study that claims prostitutes spread Aids and rob their clients. Attorney Rachel van der Walt, who is assigned to […]

Lyn Gardner : Pick of Edinburgh festival As the world’s largest arts festival draws to a close and Edinburgh tidies up and returns to normal, the most memorable fringe shocker was Acrobat, an astonishing Aussie troupe that defied gravity and good taste with a show that was the antidote to all those soft-focus circuses such […]

Brenda Atkinson : Performance Carfax, industrial home to Johannesburg’s edgily paranoid and elegantly pierced, was an apt venue for last week’s one-off performance by intellectual techmeisters, The Sunless Ensemble. Conceived, written and directed for Sunless by academic James Sey, the performance, titled Symphony of the Invisible City, is an epic hard-core venture into the pleasures […]

Glynis O’Hara reports on the return to South Africa of a huge body of Grard Sekoto’s works. Brenda Atkinson considers the state of our art heritage In an unprecedented victory for the South African art world, 2 000 works by acclaimed South African artist Grard Sekoto, who died in Paris in 1993, have been returned […]