Peta Thornycroft Glen Goosen, former director of investigations at the truth commission, has formally complained about a programme broadcast on SAfm last week which contained an interview with his former boss, Dumisa Ntsebeza. In the programme, TRC in Review, Ntsebeza accused Goosen of being part of an incompetent investigation and suggested race played a part […]

Lorraine Pace It should have been a media coup. A case that has grabbed print headlines internationally and been beamed to television screens worldwide was due to set a Web precedent last Monday. But a minute before the decision was to be issued, the Web service provider had a power failure. Ironically, this resulted in […]

FRIDAY 5.00PM: SINGER Brenda Fassie jumped over the dock at Friday’s bail hearing for “people’s poet” Mzwakhe Mbuli, as she and 200 other supporters disrupted the hearings until the magistrate walked out. Before the magistrate entered, Fassie demanded — and got — permission to go down to the cells to see Mbuli, who hugged and […]

Melvyn Minnaar If it’s apple you want to drink, go for it. There’s real, virgin apple juice, there’s fabulous, world-famous Appletiser, and then there is apple cider – the hottest, coolest drink in to-be-seen-in bars this summer. The gentrification – or yuppiefication – of cider is a world-wide phenomenon. Winning more and more bright and […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM: BAFANA BAFANA coach Clive Barker is likely to field a squad that will attack from the first whistle against Germany. He said Bafana Bafana’s skill is the only way to upset Germany. “If we are not creative we will be beaten,” said Barker. “I believe we are stronger than them in a one-on-one […]

Nkosazana Zuma and Louis Luyt are taking pep-up pills from spin doctors Ferial Haffajee It cost a lot, but the R2,8-million which Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma splashed out on improving her image and that of her department is paying dividends. Watch her: there’s a softer touch; less defensive and more confident. The three Bills […]

A dictionary says it has found a new word to represent each of the past 102 years. As if English were so limited. David Rowan and John Ezard report One of Western youth culture’s handiest, most lethal and (till recently) most universal devices of insult happens to be dropping out of the English language. The […]

Chris McGreal The United Nations has accused the new government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) of showing little more respect for human rights and democratisation than Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship. A report was released as UN investigators returned to Kinshasa to probe massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees in the east of the […]

Black civil servants, traditional leaders and peasants are discovering Northern Province’s cheap source of labour, writes Mukoni T Ratshitanga Hundreds of Mozambican children are working in Northern Province households and on farms for as little as R150 a month. The child workers, some as young as 10, are employed across the province, from Madimbo near […]

Mungo Soggot documents the extraordinary history of the Liberian set to earn R3- million a year in South Africa’s oil industry The Liberian charged with reshaping South Africa’s state oil industry helped cream off millions from his country’s own oil business and had ties with a company which pumped oil into apartheid South Africa. Emanuel […]