police Police watchdog finds itself toothless as Western Cape officers defy its recommendations over Robben Island rape.Gustav Thiel reports THE Western Cape’s police commissioner, Leon Wessels, has defied calls by the government’s Independent Complaints Directorate that he reprimand two officers involved in the botched Robben Island rape investigation. Wessels this week also retracted the “unreserved […]

FRIDAY, 12.00NOON: SPRINGBOK lock Johan Ackermann and two Gauteng Lions players, Bennie Nortje and Stephan Bronkhorst, were yesterday given two-year suspensions by a SA Rugby Football Union disciplinary inquiry for using anabolic steroids. Ackermann, one of the Blue Bulls’ highest-paid players, indicated he will lodge an appeal, citing “improper testing procedures”. The hearing was delayed […]

Amid all the horrors of Matabeleland one name stands out as being particularly synonymous with human depravity: Bhalagwe camp. It was originally a base for ex-Zipra troops incorporated into the Zimbabwe National Army. But in 1982 the troops there were accused of being dissidents. The camp was surrounded by paratroop and commando units and shut […]

Ferial Haffajee Trade unions are the training ground of a different type of MBA graduate. Like those with MBAs, unionists are all- rounders who are “well-versed in finance, work organisation and conflict resolution”, says Bobby Maree, programme co-ordinator of the Development Institute for Training, Support and Education for Labour (Ditsela). Years of negotiations have made […]

CINEMA: Charl Blignaut As I was leaving Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, it occurred to me that the impact of the movie pretty much depends on how screwed up your mother was. Or, for that matter, exactly how much it screwed your mother up to give birth to this life that would become a shadow […]

Gillian Farquhar A MAGAZINE for men that sells better than GQ and Esquire … not likely? But true … Men’s Health hit South African news-stands last week and is “the most popular men’s magazine of the decade”, says Jeffrey Morgan, its United States and worldwide publisher who was in Johannesburg last week for the magazine’s […]

consultants DESPITE employing 125 000 public servants, the Northern Province wants to set aside R790-million this year to pay for consultants and “special services”. The province’s Premier, Ngoaka Ramathlodi, said this week that its army of public officials had been “mostly trained to clerical level” and that the consultants were vital to ensure its administration […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson IN transporting Henrik Ibsen’s 19th-century naturalist drama An Enemy of the People to a local context, Wits University’s chairman of African languages, Professor Nhlanhla Maake’s adaptation is, in his own words, “a prostitute”. But it’s a hooker with no sell-by date because Ibsen’s timeless themes of power, corruption and the quest for […]

The first details of a shock report of Zimbabwe’s government troops’ atrocities in camp Bhalagwe and elsewhere has emerged despite Mugabe’s curtain of silence, writes David Beresford One of the untold horrors of Africa – the atrocities perpetrated by Robert Mugabe’s troops in the southern province of Matabeleland after independence -can finally be told. The […]

SOCCER:Julian Drew HAVING travelled with Bafana Bafana to Pointe Noire to experience the inexplicable outbreak of “Congo Fever” which saw the locals’ confidant 2-0 predictions transformed eerily into reality, it was quite clear that there were “darker” forces at play. A simple stroll around the murkier corners of the local market and a once-over of […]