As health budgets are cut to the bone, a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal is pioneering community-based care for people with HIV/Aids Khadija Magardie An unzipped first-aid kit lies on an empty table in the Community Outreach Centre at St Mary’s Hospital in Marianhill, KwaZulu-Natal. The kit comprises some bleached, carefully packaged sterile instruments, a pair of […]
Graham Hayman CROSSFIRE Red tape at the Medicines Control Council (MCC) is reported to be standing in the way of the registration of complementary medicines and African traditional medicine in the organisation’s databank. Complementary medicines (CMs) form part of the rapidly expanding worldwide market for non-prescription medicines. CMs include traditional herbal medicines (both African and […]
intact and subdued Howard Barrell On his desk, atop a clutter of scattered papers, lay a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the ancient Chinese text on how to have your cake and eat it on the battlefield. Behind his desk, the senior Democratic Party official was up and down in his chair […]
The head of the CAA allegedly contravened the Civil Aviation Act by not reporting an aircraft incident Sechaba ka’Nkosi Beleaguered Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) boss Trevor Abrahams, who was arrested this week in connection with the fraudulent issuing of pilot licences, allegedly sought to cover up a crash involving an airplane he was flying. Documents […]
THE UN Security Council debated on Thursday a British proposal to ban trade in diamonds mined from rebel-held areas of Sierra Leone. Diamonds are the major source of revenue for the Revolutionary United Front rebels, who in May took 500 UN peacekeepers hostage. The proposed resolution says that “all states shall take the necessary measures […]
Earlier this year doctors made history, using their knowledge of the genome to treat a child with a congenital condition James Meek Last February an air of euphoria seeped into the corridors of the Necker hospital for sick children in the Montparnasse district of Paris. Wondrous cures, great courage and the heart-hollowing grief of parents […]
history Maggie O’Kane in Belfast When Cyril Ramaphosa arrived at his office in Johannesburg at 11.30am on Tuesday June 27, he ended a seven-day journey that took him across the world and into Ireland’s history books. He is a witness to what may finally be the end of 30 years of violence, human loss and […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY The Chief Chief, House of Lords c/o Cricket Ground, Marylebone, Great Britain, Overseas URGENT AND IN YE UTMOST CONFIDENCE Dear Chief Lord and/or Chief Lady, We write to acquaint you with a dread Affliction which has befallen the Spirit of the Game, the said game being Ye Olde Sporte of Cricket […]
The applications of biotechnology have provoked debate about its ethics. Richard Holloway looks at some of the issues One way to classify people is by the tumbler test: pessimists say it is half empty, optimists half full. In most of the great debates about human nature people place themselves somewhere on the continuum between these […]
FORMER brothers-in-rebellion and now Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda will try to mend fences on Saturday after their armed forces clashed earlier this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The pair are expected to try to settle their differences in two days of meetings, in the wake of heavy […]
Zanu-PF militiamen were very active during Zimbabwe’s voting days. Mercedes Sayagues reports Mashimba Jeremani gasped as he walked into the polling station at Mataga. His torturer was seated at the table, a Zanu- PF polling agent badge pinned on his chequered flannel shirt. When their eyes met, Musiwa Mapiye lowered his head. Jeremani (22) and […]
financier Justin Arenstein Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa distanced himself from shady “freelance” financier Jean Mopotu this week following revelations that the Zairian tried to source funding for Phosa’s ambitious R390-million casino development in Mozambique. Mopotu attained notoriety in 1998 when he helped international fraud fugitive and suspected chemi- cal weapons dealer Moshe Regen- streich […]
losses Glenda Daniels ‘I might be earning cents at the moment, but it’s early days and it’s better than sitting at home and starving,” says thirtysomething single mother Joyce Moemedi, who has joined a small-business project to learn mosaic skills after 10 years of unemployment. Moemedi, who once had no skills, is now general secretary […]
Iden Wetherell Zimbabweans are this week treating what is officially a win for President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party in the general election as a triumph for the opposition. Zanu-PF retained power by hanging on to 62 of the 120 elected seats in last weekend’s poll. But it lost 57 seats to the Movement for Democratic […]
Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa distanced himself from shady “freelance” financier Jean Mopotu this week following revelations that the Zairian tried to source funding for Phosa’s ambitious R390-million casino development in Mozambique. Mopotu attained notoriety in 1998 when he helped international fraud fugitive and suspected chemical weapons dealer Moshe Regenstreich mastermind Mpumalanga’s R1,3-billion promissory note […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION At what stage, I wonder, will SABC upper management, let alone its board, decide to exercise some authority and bring the crude excesses of its television news department under some sort of control? The department quite clearly believes itself to be immune to any sort of restraint, nor does it deem necessary […]
drums Paul Kirk Rural communities in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands may be slowly poisoning themselves by using metal drums stolen from a highly controversial chemical factory. Thor Chemicals, the plant in Cato Ridge, KwaZulu-Natal, that was the subject of a judicial commission of inquiry after two of its workers died from mercury poisoning, has admitted that […]
Martina’s back and her huge army of fans go to Eastbourne to lay out the welcome mat Veronica Lee Eastbourne is a funny old place. Famous for being the south of England’s favourite retirement town, where you can smell the formaldehyde rolling in off the sea, it’s also slap bang in the middle of a […]
Kelwyn Sole SONG TRIALS by Mxolisi Nyezwa (Gecko) For a number of years now, Mxolisi Nyezwa’s poems have appeared in local and international journals, as well as forming part of the 1992 collection Essential Things. In addition, he is editor of one of the most innovative literary journals published at the moment, Kotaz. Nyezwa is […]
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki will chair a new super cabinet committee which will “co-ordinate and monitor” everything related to national security. The inter-ministerial committee, to be known as the National Security Council, will be able to deal swiftly with security threats including natural disasters, regional conflicts and internal instability, government spokesman Joel Netshitenzhe said after the […]
Shaun de Waal NOT QUITE THE THRILLER OFTHEWEEK Tom Cruise has big plans for his Mission: Impossible franchise. The role of superspy Ethan Hunt offers him a well- paying action-movie base from which to venture in more challenging directions – Eyes Wide Shut, for instance, or his brilliant turn in Magnolia. Moreover, being co-producer as […]
Steve Whiting CRICKET The “back from the brink” one-wicket win over England at Canterbury last Sunday gave South Africa’s women cricketers more than a glimmer of hope in a five-match series that seemed to be slipping into oblivion after they lost the first two – it also gave them a hope of being taken seriously […]
Robyn Alexander THIRTEEN CENTS by K Sello Duiker (Ink Inc) SKYLINE by Patricia Schonstein Pinnock (David Philip) Each of these intriguing first novels opens so as to immediately absorb the reader into its first-person narrator’s world. K Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents begins with 12-year-old Azure’s introduction of himself – “Ah-zoo-ray. That’s how you say it.” […]
Howard Barrell The new opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is likely to win at least one out of every five town council seats in the forthcoming local government elections. It has a realistic chance of taking control of Cape Town and, if the African National Congress has difficulty in getting its vote to the […]
A BRITISH man has jumped 2120 metres in a parachute made according to a design sketched by Italian inventor Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century, proving that the pyramid-shaped contraption works. Beeld newspaper said Adrian Nicholas launched himself from a hot air balloon drifting close to the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga province, at […]
Four farm labourers claimed at the hearing that they were sacked for joining unions, unproven theft and protesting against being assaulted.
Chris Buchanan The liberation of our gambling laws, allowing a manifestation of mega casino resorts in metropolitan areas, has done very little for the architectural integrity of our new nation. Long have we strived for that identity that would render our commercial, retail and hospitality developments reminiscent of an African ethos, rather than a post-modern […]
penguins The number of polluted seabirds could skyrocket as oil leaking from the sunken Treasure spreads up the West Coast Marianne Merten Maritime and conservation officials are racing against time to contain the ecological disaster off the Cape coast as oil slicks have spread from Green Point, Cape Town, up the West Coast to Dassen […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH If your electoral commission was like the one in my country, Ghana, which consistently ignores opposition demands on registration of voters, the reopening of electoral registers, and also rejects indeed any other request that the ruling party does not endorse, you would appreciate what President Robert Mugabe and his […]
Guy Willoughby describes putting together his new play about Olive Schreiner’s forgotten brother Will ‘The only duty we owe to history”, declared Oscar Wilde, “is to rewrite it.” Eighteen months ago, a National Arts Council grant in hand, I set out to do just that – or at least to refashion the historical record about […]
A BOY died and 24 others were hospitalised in the Eastern Cape after circumcisions performed on them as part of a rite of passage went wrong. Police said the boys, all Xhosas aged between 14 and 18, are in a serious condition and there are fears that some of them may have to have their […]
More than 80% of the proposed 17E000ha of the Coega industrial development zone is in private hands Peter Dickson With six months to go before builders begin clearing the land for the proposed R1,6-billion deepwater port at Coega outside Port Elizabeth, one man’s mine stands in the way of the Eastern Cape’s much-vaunted “economic miracle”. […]