Marion Edmunds `I WANT my rape courts,” bellowed the exasperated attorney general of the Western Cape, Frank Kahn, down the phone line this week. “We’ve been waiting for four years and nothing has been done.” Earlier this week, Kahn hit out at the Department of Justice in his annual report tabled in Parliament for its […]

Andrew O’Hagan THE DIVING-BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY by Jean- Dominique Bauby (Fourth Estate, R99,95) THERE have always been writers capable of rising to the occasions and complications of their illnesses, and some of them – Katherine Mansfield, Oscar Moore – might be thought to have been at their best when doing so. Not all writers […]

A Queenstown family accuses Clarence Makwetu of using his influence to deprive them of their land. Marion Edmunds reports THE former Pan Africanist Congress president, Clarence Makwetu, used his contacts in the Cabinet to block a land claim from white farmers for a 761ha property which he says is his own. According to Neville Fletcher, […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM MORE than half the sample in an informal email survey of South African emigrants to the United States said their quality of life and prospects had improved in the US. The survey, using a random sample of subscribers to Juluka, a newsletter for expatriates, found 80% had reported incomes above the median for […]

FRIDAY, 10.00AM: WORLD soccer governing body Fifa turned down the SA Department of Sports’ bid to financially assist Zaire. Zaire requested help from the South African Football Association earlier this week, asking for R1,1-million to help the team finish their World Cup qualification programme. Safa submitted a proposal to Fifa, but were told it would […]

THE response to the publication of Washington Post correspondent Keith Richburg’s book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, which provides a dramatic depiction of the suffering and brutality of our continent, has been heated and acrimonious. Though this extract first appeared in the Post two years ago, the fury of the debate has […]

SUTTNER IN SWEDEN RAYMOND SUTTNER, chairman of parliament’s foriegn affairs committee and a vociferious proponent of an “ethical” foreign policy, has been appointed ambassador to Sweden. Sheila Sisulu, director of World Wide Africa Investment Holdings, has been appointed consul general to New York. MEYER MISSES MEETING MEYER-WATCHERS concerned with which way the National Party’s former […]

BRENDA ATKINSON reports on an art exhibition causing an ethical stir IN 1994, Marylin Zimmerman, a photography professor at an American state university, threw away a roll of film containing nude photographs she had taken of her three- year-old daughter in the bath. A cleaner discovered the film, turned it over to the university’s Department […]

Millions of people camped in informal settlements are transforming the country’s industrial heartland. Mungo Soggot and Tangeni Amupadhi report on the urban time bomb THEY often strike in the early hours of a cold winter’s morning. Groups of men armed with bags of chalk and a flag assemble on empty land. They mark out plots […]

The women played some strokes of genius but there were not many spectactors to witness them GOLF:Mark Lamport-Stokes LAST week’s South African women’s amateur golf championships at Killarney Golf Club highlighted two factors: this country possesses women golfers of a high quality but the sport still struggles to attract the galleries. Immaculate Killarney in Johannesburg […]