Staff Reporter

“We feel we have retained our support, although not as much as we expected.” ANC losing candidate for Cape Town Lynne Brown “Who can take Tony Leon seriously?” ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama “He [new Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo] should maybe look at a tortoise shell frame to blend in with the colour of his skin. […]

A photographic display in the Northern Province puts its big-city rivals to shame. Stephen Gray looks at the life of one of the best chroniclers of South Africa’s past Prizing itself on its uniqueness, the new provincial capital of the north, Pietersburg, has a cultural attraction which is without equal in South Africa an entire […]

Veteran reporter Doreen Levin has been intrigued by the Miss South Africa beauty pageant since first covering the event in 1972 Rachel Martens ‘The first Miss South Africa competition I attended was held at the Johannesburg City Hall,” recalls Doreen Levin, wryly adding that much of the evening was spent carrying messages for irate performers […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Of the opportunistic infections which flourish around the HIV is the series of vulgar entertainments which regularly appear in its name. Sarafina 2 was the first of these unpleasant tumours and has been followed by many florid metastases, like the R5-million extravaganza mounted at the opening of the Aids Conference in Durban […]

Thebe Mabanga and photographer Nadine Hutton meandered through South Africa’s rural hinterland on polling day When Alan Paton wrote of a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills, he sought to capture a unique aspect of his childhood and this beloved country. There are a number of other places that are of equally […]

AFree State town has paid appropriate and touching tribute to its most famous son Stephen Gray The hamlet of Philippolis in the Transgariep, south-west Free State, has developed a striking new feature to commemorate one of its celebrated sons. This is no waggon-wheel and ironstone affair, or variation on a tombstone like their memorial to […]

Jaspreet Kindra The Inkatha Freedom Party was bolstered by this week’s poll, beefing up its traditional rural support base in KwaZulu-Natal. The IFP managed to improve its performance in last year’s general election of 41,9% in the province, increasing its share to at least 45%. At the time of going to press the IFP had […]

Marianne Merten soccer The National Soccer League (NSL) has six months to change its regulations on player transfers to bring its rules in line with the Constitution. The Cape High Court this week ruled as “inconsistent with the Constitution of South Africa” those NSL regulations prohibiting players from becoming free agents once their contracts with […]

to loan sharks Khadija Magardie The light drizzle that quickly turns to a heavy downpour has not discouraged the steady stream of elderly men and women from queuing in the early hours of the morning to collect their monthly government handout. Anyone arriving at the Coronationville Community Centre after 7am has to stand at the […]

Justin Arenstein and Michael Matari The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Thursday demanded audio tapes from the SABC following reports that one of its regional Northern Province radio stations encouraged rural resi-dents to boycott the local government elections as part of an ethnic feud. Northern Province chief electoral officer Zwo Nevhutalu said Radio Munghana Lonene […]

Xolamzi ka Sam A SECOND LOOK Thuli Nhlapo’s article, “Colour me yellow” (November 17 to 23), made me cry for her, for myself and for the others out there, who have been labelled and called names. What really got to me was when Thuli said that “since my attempts to be accepted were unsuccessful, I […]

We hope that the private response of African National Congress leaders to the results of Tuesday’s local government elections is more sober than the unconcern they have affected in public. The poll registered serious murmurings of dissatisfaction with the ruling party among its traditional support base. The party’s share of the vote is down on […]

Richard Jago tennis For a third and final time Bjorn Borg feels ready to risk the abyss of Life After Tennis. When the born-again Borg began his last tournament in Britain this week, the over-35s Honda Challenge at the Albert Hall, many felt nostalgia while the Swede was eager to demonstrate that he is no […]

GHANAIAN President Jerry Rawlings, in a final address to the nation before elections heralding an end to his 19 years in power, called for peaceful and fair polling and pledged to hand over power to the people’s choice. Vice President John Atta Mills is facing a stiff challenge in Thursday’s election from John Kufuor of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday THE Cape High Court has granted a secret order for an inquiry into LeisureNet, the embattled health and entertainment company, according to the daily Business Report. The inquiry, in terms of section 417 of the Companies Act, was brought in secret in a bid to prevent possibly wayward directors […]

A PREGNANT 17-year-old girl sentenced by an Islamic court in Nigeria to 180 lashes for pre-marital sex will give birth within days, her family said. Bariya Ibrahim Magazu told the court in September she had been pressured into having sex with three middle-aged men from her village and produced seven witnesses who agreed to her […]

HUGH NEVILL, Johannesburg | Thursday SOUTH African politics has entered a new phase with the emergence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as genuine opposition to President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, say analysts. “What is worrying is that people have voted along class and race lines,” said Richard […]

THE body of a strangled seven-year-old boy from Eerste River outside Cape Town has been found in a suitcase under his parents’ bed. Cheslyn Hammers’ aunt found his body when she went to fetch clean towels from the suitcase. The boy’s father has been arrested for murder, while his mother thought he was visiting his […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Thursday CANADIAN mining firm Tiomin Resources has defended its titanium mining project in Kenya, denying claims it had acted heavy-handedly, paid bribes and covered up the presence of radioactive materials. Opposition to Tiomin’s $120m project to mine an estimated 12% of the world’s largest deposits of titanium on the southern coast […]

AN eight-year-old Zimbabwean boy was burned to death after lighting a candle for his father in an illegal petrol dump in Harare. The boy, Brian Alfenti, had been helping his father when a power cut hit the township of Zengeza. The flame from the candle, held near petrol being poured by hand into a minibus […]

ERICSSON South Africa has been awarded Telkom’s coveted QTel Gold quality certification, a South African quality standard for the local telecommunications industry. Ericsson is one of only nine of Telkom’s top 20 local vendors to have been awarded the QTel Gold certification. Several of the 35 vendors on the QTel listing are foreign companies. This […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday INVESTIGATORS in the case of apartheid chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson had no idea of the murders of hundreds of Swapo detainees and SADF members until apartheid assassin Johan Theron made a full confession “out of the blue”. Senior Superintendent Dawid Venter, who was at one stage one of the […]

ADE OBISESAN, Lagos | Thursday LATE Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha attempted to assassinate his then number two with a bomb blast at Abuja airport in 1997, a packed human rights hearing has heard. Former lieutenant-general Oladipo Diya told the Nigerian human rights panel Abacha’s agents had planted the car bomb that blew up outside […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Wednesday SCAVENGERS, undeterred by the death of some 60 people in last week’s fuel pipeline fire in Nigeria, have begun scooping up fuel around another leak site. Security agents guarding the Atlas Cove Jetty, a few metres from the site of the inferno near Lagos port, stood by and watched as […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday MURDER charges have been dropped against the Zimbabwean war veteran alleged to have shot dead a white farmer, David Stevens – ostensibly for “lack of evidence”. Stevens, an outspoken supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was the first of six white farmers killed in more than nine […]

THREE people accused of painting a 14-year-old girl white after accusing her of shoplifting will be tried in the Louis Trichardt Regional Court in March next year. Former Pep Stores manager Thelma Strydom and two colleagues, Julia Munyai and Albert Mbezi, have not been asked to plead on charges of assault, theft and crimen injuria. […]

SOME 400 Rwandan children who took part in the 1994 genocide have gone to camps for two months of UN-backed re-education before their release, Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo said this week. Their training, financed by UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund), includes civics lessons and workshops on justice and human rights. Between 2 000 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday POTIONS made of bark and crushed leaves are being used successfully to treat infections plaguing Aids victims in Tanzania’s Tanga region, a Commonwealth conference on phytomedicines has heard. American David Scheinman told delegates from Africa and Europe a German doctor had stumbled on the benefits of the traditional medicines […]

THE Nigerian justice minister has been asked to explain the “abduction” of a businessman to the United States at the request of the US drugs agency. The lawyer of Lanre Shittu, a prominent car dealer, asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to summon minister Bola Ige to explain why the government allowed the US […]

HUMAN rights activists and opposition parties have called for the immediate resignation of Malawi’s Electoral Commission chairman Judge James Kalaile after he tried to dismiss massive voter apathy as “nonsense”. Kalaile said the turnout of only 14,2% of Malawi’s 5,2 million voters in the country’s first ever multi-party local government elections last month was better […]

THE ruling Avant-Garde for Madagascan Renewal (AREMA) has emerged victorious in most cities except the capital after weekend polls for new provincial administrations. Turnout in Sunday’s proportional representation elections, which will eventually lead to the creation of six provincial governments after more than a century of extreme centralism, was about 30%. Results out so far […]

ANNA BORZELLO, Gulu | Wednesday HUNDREDS of colleagues and friends of Matthew Lukwiya, the doctor who led the fight against Uganda’s outbreak of Ebola, laid him to rest, with some wailing, others weeping, but none of them holding hands or embracing. Such is the virulence of Ebola that Lukwiya’s pallbearers wore protective masks, gloves, caps […]