Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Monday SOUTH Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to uncover the truth about black-on-black violence, the last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, has told a Nigerian newspaper. Nigeria last year set up a commission to investigate human rights abuses dating back to 1966. Chaired by former Supreme Court Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, […]

MORE than 60 Nigerians have died when an explosion ripped through a fractured pipeline at a state-run loading depot outside Lagos, police and witnesses said. Hundreds of people were illegally siphoning off fuel from the pipeline, operated by the state-run oil Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), when the blast occurred, witnesses said. The incident is […]

PARANOIA, professional jealously and conspiracy theories have made normal management at the University of the North impossible, a national education department probe found this week. Education Minister Kader Asmal said in a statement that government was left with little choice but to appoint an independent management team headed by a handpicked administrator to try and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela has told a trade union rally that no white party can run South Africa, attacking the opposition Democratic Alliance in a bid to win votes for the ANC in Tuesday’s municipal elections. “You must not be misled by a party that only cares for […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Addis Ababa | Sunday MORE than 1500 key Africans are gathering here for a four-day forum to forge consensus on an African-owned, African-led response against the Aids pandemic on the continent. The organisers of the Addis Ababa “interactive forum” say the gathering aims to break a wall of silence and rejection around the […]

BARRY STREEK, Cape Town | Friday OUSTED Western Cape MEC and former member of the Democratic Alliance, Freda Adams, has upped the stakes in her sexual harassment battle with DA mayoral candidate Peter Marais, providing details of his raunchy and unsolicited advances. She has now signed a sworn affidavit giving particulars and dates of her […]

EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Friday PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) is pulling out all the stops in a bid to win the closely-contested race for mayor of greater Cape Town in next week’s municipal elections, which will consolidate local government throughout the country. Control of the city and the Western Cape province […]

The Democratic Alliance’s trumpeting of the defection of Solly Kotane to its ranks and the African National Congress’s exhibitionism over former newspaper spy Craig Kotze symbolise the rank opportunism that has characterised our local government elections. Just when we thought that no one could go lower, the DA delighted at the questionable granting of amnesty […]

Robert Kitson rugby Of all the grim picket-line images involving the England squad last week, few will fade slower than Jason Leonard, in his brown leather jacket and jeans, standing calmly in the car park of the team hotel and announcing that, yes, he was as prepared as anyone to sacrifice his international career on […]

Standard computer equipment and software can often be the key to a better life for disabled people Mandy Collins Most of us take technology for granted we have computers at home and at work, we can access the Internet, we have smart cards, smart phones, palmtop organisers the list is endless. The future, too, is […]

Marianne Merten ‘I want to come back [to District Six]. God spare me,” says 85-year-old Fatima Benting. But she and 1700 other families will have to wait a few more months before their new homes are ready. The dream of one of the key movers behind the return to District Six, Anwah Nagia, is that […]

Andrew Muchineripi soccer If ever a community scored an own goal it was Vosloorus last weekend when a bunch of barbarians brought shame to the East Rand, Gauteng and South Africa. Unless I have been reading the mind of President Thabo Mbeki upside down, what had been happening in the East Rand township was exactly […]

Serjeant at the Bar Gilbert Marcus, SC, dealt most effectively with the complaints of Rex van Schalkwyk, once a judge of the supreme court (“Constitutional Court: A triumph over repression”, November 17 to 23). Hence the question as to why the need to traverse the same ground yet again. The reason is simple: Van Schalkwyk’s […]

A new project to save medicinal plants from extinction will initially concentrate on five plants that are fast-growing and popular among healers Fiona Macleod An ambitious project was launched in Mpumalanga on December 1 to grow high volumes of traditional medicinal plants by cloning them from DNA. The main goal of the project, launched at […]

A new book suggests that a South African mercenary may have assassinated a former UN secretary general Nawaal Deane A new biography of former United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjld has rekindled suspicions of South African involvement in his death. Hammarskjld was killed in an airplane crash on September 18 1961 near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, […]

Notes & Queries Who first described aristocratic blood as “blue” and why? n The warriors of Islam called the Moors (or more poetically by the lyrical name Blackamoors) ruled over most of Spain for five centuries.?Toward the end of their rule the Spanish aristocrats of Castile began to distinguish themselves from these darker-skinned people by […]

Christianity faces extinction and it is not science but Christians themselves who are to blame for its demise, argues AN Wilson The millennium is the anniversary of an event that we no longer believe: namely, the birth of Almighty God in human form in a stable in Bethlehem. How, at this date in history, could […]

The Shangaan community in the Northern Province fears it will be sidelined in the municipality shake-up Evidence wa ka Ngobeni For the past two years Mzamani Mathebula has been queuing at Nandoni dam, an incomplete water reservoir project in the Northern Province, in search of employment. Mathebula, who has been unemployed for the past seven […]

Steven Friedman Worm’s eye view The interesting story in next week’s local elections may not be the share of the vote the major parties win, but that which they do not. Talk of electoral swings notwithstanding, it is a safe bet that the African National Congress will win the vast majority of local councils. But […]

After the hoopla, the people will speak Reports by Jaspreet Kindra, Sechaba ka Nkosi, Marianne Merten, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Phillip Nkosi, Peter Dickson and Justin Arenstein Free State The Free State has had a strikingly lacklustre run-up to the local government poll. The Electoral Institute of South Africa (Eisa) says the parties’ election campaigns […]

Valentine Cascarino It’s dawn on a weekday and Joubert Park, former playground of nocturnal romance, is already busy. Its occupants are homeless characters, lying flat on their stomachs a technique they claim relieves the incisive pains of hunger. Outside the grounds schoolkids muscle their way through boisterous taxi drivers and passengers while within the park […]

Barry Streek Ousted Western Cape MEC and former member of the Democratic Alliance Freda Adams has upped the stakes in her sexual harassment battle with DA mayoral candidate Peter Marais, providing details of his raunchy and unsolicited advances. She has now signed a sworn affidavit giving particulars and dates of her claims that Marais, her […]

John Arlidge It has been dismissed as racist and divisive, but scientists are confronting the greatest taboo in sport: that black athletes are “genetically programmed” to run faster and longer than white athletes. In the most comprehensive study of the biological differences between African and European athletes, Scandinavian researchers compared runners in Kenya and Denmark. […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION The best of the rash of humorous comments made about the United States presidential election fiasco was by an American television comic, at a stage last week when the public farce was proceeding apace in the Florida Supreme Court. He commented: “The good news is that neither George Bush nor Al Gore […]

Barry Streek The government has instructed property valuers to calculate the “risks of land invasion” because of their potential negative influence on property prices. This is the first time the government has implicitly acknowledged the threat of land invasions in South Africa and their potentially devastating impact on property prices, particularly in commercial farming areas. […]

Deborah Bee Body Language Is beauty an advantage? Does it make the beautiful individual powerful? Does it, as researchers at London Guildhall University revealed recently, result in substantially better pay and opportunities in the workplace? “Looks are always talked about as if they’re power, when what it is of course is that power has to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Friday UNETHICAL business practices are common among South African doctors, with nearly two-thirds of doctors in a study about ethical practice in the medical profession that they had seen a colleague acting unethically. According to a report in Afrikaans daily Beeld, almost two thirds (65%) said doctors supplement their income by […]

The South African Revenue Service is arming itself to eliminate tax loop-holes in Internet commerce, reports Sherilee Bridge E-commerce is fast becoming e-conmerce. Once the taxes and duties have been slapped on, where’s the bargain? And it’s about to get worse. Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (Sars) Pravin Gordhan says formal Internet taxation […]

Meaningless matches on second-rate pitches will not draw people back to first-class cricket Peter Robinson Last Friday Stephen Fleming’s New Zealand tourists piled themselves into their team bus at the crack of dawn and trundled off into the Eastern Cape hinterland to play perhaps the most pointless match of their South African tour a one-day […]

As a biologist, Barbara Kingsolver sees human beings as a small part of the natural order. As a novelist, she foregrounds the individual Suzie Mackenzie Recently, Barbara Kingsolver told her publishers she would continue to do book tours and readings only if these took place in halls of no less than 500 people and if […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday AFRICA’S two most powerful nations, Nigeria and South Africa, have demanded that Zimbabwe abide by its laws in its controversial program to confiscate white-owned farms. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and South African President Thabo Mbeki, after two-and-a-half hours of talks with embattled President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, stopped short of […]

Barry Streek A campaign to popularise the use of bicycles in South Africa, including the construction of cycle paths in urban areas, is to be launched next year by the Department of Transport despite the dangers to cyclists on the country’s roads. Minister of Transport Abdullah Omar says the National Bicycle Transport Demonstration Programme would […]