sake’ Jean Evans I don’t stand to gain anything by writing my story. Well, maybe I do! I want to know that Professor Werner Bezwoda will continue to be my doctor and that his life’s dedication to the treatment of cancer is not wasted. When I was 34-years old, with a toddler of just two […]
EIGHT people died and four are missing when a bridge across the swollen Kei river collapsed. One survivor has been plucked from the raging waters. A light truck with 10 people on board and a bus carrying only two or three people tired to cross a bridge about halfway between Queenstown and Cofimvaba when it […]
South African National Parks denies plans to cull elephants despite documented evidence to the contrary Fiona Macleod South African National Parks (SANP) and the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism this week vociferously denied plans to resume culling elephants in the Kruger National Park, despite documentary evidence that the park proposes to cull between 400 […]
Ebrahim Harvey CROSSFIRE The South African situation is no longer simply black and white. Since 1994 our situation has acquired a much more complex and dynamic character. Yet, unfortunately, a narrow, inward-looking, simplistic and unscientific approach manifested itself at last week’s South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) inquiry into racism in the media. As the […]
I’m putting the following comments at the top of this week’s column in the obscure hope that someone, somewhere in M-Net might pay attention to them. As I say it’s an obscure hope. M-Net, as a rule, don’t pay much attention to ought but their own council. They certainly don’t demonstrate much discernible consideration for […]
Cedric Mason SPIRITLEVEL South Africa suffers from spiritual malnutrition. Flood and drought have sapped physical strength and produced grim pictures of starving bodies and hopeless eyes. Lack of spiritual strength causes the grim picture of crime and corruption, murder and rape, and poverty and violence that is sucking the hope out of our young nation. […]
The ANC seems to be wooing the opposition in preparation for local government elections Peter Dickson and Jaspreet Kindra The African National Congress this week stepped up efforts to neutralise the fragile opposition in the country in preparation for the November local government elections. In the Eastern Cape, ANC Premier Makhenkesi Stofile told the New […]
GAUTENG crunched Eastern Province by six wickets in the first leg of their Standard Bank Cup semi-final match at St George’s Park, thanks mainly to the wiles of skipper Ken Rutherford. Batting first after winning the toss, Eastern Province racked up a total of 179/8 in the rain-hit match which saw the amount of overs […]
Stefaans Brmmer and Inigo Gilmore South Africa’s failure to come clean on a massacre pulled off by its paratroopers 18 months ago in Lesotho is bedevilling relations between Pretoria and the mountain kingdom’s popular royal family. Little is known about the skirmish at Katse Dam where 17 Lesotho and two South African soldiers died. Paratroopers […]
Justin Arenstein The mystery man behind Mpumalanga’s R1,3- billion promissory note deal, international fugitive Moshe Regenstreich, has been linked to illegal trade in chemical weapons, including deadly mustard and sarin nerve gas. Regenstreich, also known by his Israeli family name of Regev, was blacklisted by the United States Congress and State Department in 1995 after […]
Suren Pillay CROSSFIRE The opening epigraph to Salman Rushdie’s fascinating account of his journey to freshly post-revolution Nicaragua opens with the following limerick: There was a young girl in Nicaragua who smiled as she rode on a jaguar, they returned from the ride, with the girl inside and the smile on the face of the […]
electro-shock Heather Hogan The proposed new Mental Health Care Bill has one striking omission – it fails to deal with one of the most controversial methods of treatment, electro-shock therapy (ECT). Experts this week were sharply divided on the therapy, which is used extensively in South Africa. Those in favour claim it is a life-saver; […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY I think I am beginning to understand just a little of what it was like for Sandra Laing – the 10-year-old girl famously catapulted from white South Africa to black South Africa during the apartheid era. It struck me a few weeks ago when I was trying to buy a second-hand […]
BAFANA Bafana have slipped two spots in the world soccer rankings issued by Fifa on Wednesday. They fell from 21st spot to the 23rd, which they share with Chile. Both have 626 points. Brazil tops the ranking, followed by the Czech Republic, France, Spain and Germany. England are in the 11th spot.
John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF ‘You’re going to where this time?!” said the voice on the other end of the phone. I thought she was interested in the controversial nature of my destination, but in fact she merely wanted to register her astonishment that I was getting into another aircraft and flying to yet […]
Zulu Paul Kirk The KwaZulu-Natal government is launching a probe into the province’s MEC for Social Welfare and Population Development, Gideon Zulu, for alleged nepotism and misappropriation of state funds. Premier Lionel Mtshali’s representative, Mahlathi Tembe, said the investigation team, to be announced through a provincial edition of the Government Gazette next week, would probe […]
The Oscars are fast approaching, and the official site at www.oscar.com or www.oscars.com, has all the nominations, while Yahoo! is providing links to further coverage at www.movies.yahoo.com/oscars/. The American Institute of Physics has assembled a fascinating and comprehensive resource worthy of a visit and exploration from anyone interested in our understanding of the nature of […]
Grant Shimmin SWIMMING On the biographies page of the website run by Fina, global swimming’s governing body, you’ll currently find the name of only one South African and there are no prizes for guessing who it is. The fact that Penny Heyns is the country’s sole representative among a gallery of the biggest names in […]
Jane Rosenthal STAMLAND by Karel Schoeman (Human & Rousseau) BULLER SE PLAN by Ingrid Winterbach (Human & Rousseau) Interestingly, Karel Schoeman begins this travelogue by shedding some of his baggage,in more ways than one. His shoulder bag goes missing and he is obliged to sleep over in the airport and have his first view of […]
Colin Blackstock There is always a twist in a Stephen King story, and his latest work is no different. Having just tipped his hat to publishing’s past with a serialised novel, The Green Mile, the master of horror embraces the future by offering his latest story exclusively over the Internet. King describes his latest story, […]
The must-have accessory is a flashy Web address Martin Clark What’s in a name? On the World Wide Web, perhaps millions of rands. As e-commerce burst into the public consciousness last year, the scramble to establish a Web presence began to reach gold rush proportions. And like shovel sellers who made a fortune from the […]
Belinda Beresford It has been vilified as the devil’s excrement and lusted after as black gold, but oil still continues to lubricate the world economy. Whatever you call it, oil has been nothing but bad news for Africa. Those who have it curse it. So do those who don’t. Countries without oil supplies believe their […]
Paul Kirk In the week that KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali created a new department to regulate expenditure on the royal family, the province’s auditor general released extraordinary new details about the Zulu king’s high-flying lifestyle. In a report tabled in the provincial legislature, Auditor General Barry Wheeler records how the taxpayer footed the bill for […]
The participants in the annual Durban- Johannesburg Commemorative Run are there for the sheer joy of motorcycling Gavin Foster It’s hard to get an adrenalin rush riding a 65-year-old motorcycle for more than 600km at a speed of 60kph, but there are other compensations. You get to see more of the countryside, you get to […]
Paul Kirk Durban’s senior public prosecutor, Barend Groen, this week withdrew one of the criminal charges facing Piet Meyer, the disgraced former provincial commander of the organised crime unit, after the prosecution’s star witness was murdered. Groen withdrew criminal charges relating to the disappearance of a suspected drug dealer and a quantity of cocaine. Meyer, […]
A scientist says there is no longer such a thing as a purely natural weather event Mike Hulme With the immediate crisis in Mozambique gradually receding, now is the time to address the question I have been asked most frequently over these past two weeks by journalists, friends and acquaintances and even by my own […]
Thebe Mabanga The Windybrow Centre for the Arts in Hillbrow is currently hosting its Annual Arts Festival amidst threats of closure. Now celebrating its twentieth Anniversary, the festival could be the last if measures to rescue the Windybrow are not put in place urgently. “It would be a tragedy if we were to stand by […]
LAWRENCE BARTLETT, Harare | Friday 7.45pm. ZIMBABWE’S besieged white farmers won a court battle Friday over the occupation of their land by independence war veterans, despite President Robert Mugabe’s public approval of the invasions. High Court judge Paddington Garwe declared the occupations illegal and ordered the thousands of squatters who have invaded more than 500 […]
Donald Trelford was on the brink of being sacked as Observer editor by tycoon Tiny Rowland after he exposed atrocities in Zimbabwe. Sixteen years later, he reveals the full story of the scandal that may yet end Robert Mugabe’s presidency It began in the parched earth of Matabeleland, among the cactus and the baobab trees, […]
After discovering that HIV/Aids is killing up to three truckers a day, the road freight industry launched a sex education project Khadija Magardie It is early evening and there are already more than 15 prostitutes standing around the rest area for truckers at Warden, along the N3 highway to Durban. With a deafening hoot and […]
Napoleon’ Ivor Powell A bad time for embattled Zimbabwean businessman Billy Rautenbach, the one-time “Napoleon of Africa”, got even worse this week with the issuing of a government decree in the Democratic Republic of Congo summarily revoking Rautenbach’s lucrative mining concessions in the country. Earlier this year, Rautenbach faced the liquidation of his Botswana-based Hyundai […]
Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER The World Cup inspection team came, saw and were very impressed. Sundowns and Orlando Pirates served up a six-goal feast, and the Amaglug-glug once again captured the hearts of the nation with a thrilling win over Ghana. All is well within the South African soccer kingdom, and there is a real chance […]