Staff Reporter

Howard Barrell African leaders were guardedly optimistic about making progress towards peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo at their meeting in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, which began this week. South Africa has rejoined Congo peace efforts, indicating that it has received assurances from African states supporting Laurent Kabila, Congo’s erratic president, that the new […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Rome | Friday 12.30pm. THE Sierra Leone capital was calm on Thursday night, according to the Catholic Misna news agency, which reported a halt in fighting in Freetown’s eastern Kissy district. “The night seems to be calm,” a Sierra Leonean priest in the city told the Rome-based agency late last night. “On the […]

Mungo Soggot A Soweto man has received South Africa’s largest personal injury award – R17- million – in compensation for the paralysis and dismemberment he sustained after being shot wrongfully by the police. The Johannesburg High Court granted the award with costs in December – more than 10 years after the man was shot. As […]

A columnist in the American journal Business Week pointed out in the New Year that the single most important improvement in the quality of life of Americans during the past two decades has been the fall in crime. This, he said, had punctured the views – commonly trotted out in South Africa – that poverty […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North As the guns boom around Freetown and its starving citizens cower inside those of their walls that have not yet been burnt down, who would have thought that Sierra Leone was once one of the favoured spots in West Africa? Its Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, was once […]

Mark Milner Soccer Ajax, the Dutch football club, this week claimed a world first with the purchase of a South African soccer club with the aim of nurturing young talent. Under the terms of a franchising agreement, Ajax, which is quoted on the Amsterdam stock exchange, is taking a 51% stake in Ajax Cape Town, […]

David Shapshak The Cabinet has discussed the possibility of deploying the army at the end of the year in anticipation of possible chaos stemming from the year 2000 computer problem (Y2K), says Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Jay Naidoo. “I have discussed with the Cabinet the possibility of mobilising the security services in terms […]

CD of the week: Dave Chislett The recent vast successes of the Springbok Nude Girls, best exemplified by the track Blue Eyes, has tended to overshadow the roots of the band, and the fact that, without a doubt, they are really an alternative act. At Nude Girls shows at the moment, you will find trendies, […]

Alex Dodd It is Tuesday midday. We are driving along the N1, returning to Johannesburg after taking in Jo Ractliffe’s End of Time show in Nieu Bethesda. It’s hot and the road seems to go on forever. Attention is anaesthetised by an immensity of nothingness – nothing but the blank Karoo landscape and the road […]

Edmund White THE SPELL by Alan Hollinghurst (Chatto & Windus) This is a thoroughly English novel in one way and totally exotic in another. What is undeniably English about the writing is the delicate sense of social comedy, the oblique silliness, all insinuation and suspension points, and the zanily camp humour, not to mention the […]

SOUTH Africa’s Elana Meyer became the first woman in the world to break the 67-minute mark for the half marathon as she clinched victory at the Tokyo City 21,1km on Friday morning. The Stellenbosch athlete set a world record at 66min 44sec in freezing 5 degrees Celsius conditions, beating Kenya’s Ester Winjiro by five seconds. […]

THE Cape Town Magistrate’s Court will decide on Friday whether to send for psychiatric observation a man who confessed to planting the New Year’s Day bomb at Cape Town’s Waterfront. Charles Manamela (25), a Nigerian who is a naturalised South African, was arrested on January 12 for a spate of bomb hoaxes in Cape Town. […]

Gideon Nieuwoudt has been refused amnesty for the killing of Steve Biko. Peter Dickson describes the career of one of apartheid’s most ruthless killers He is the last non-impersonator alive with Elvis Presley sideburns. His face is lined with untold stories you don’t want to know. Before the prospect of prison and the seekers of […]

Iden Wetherell The detention by military police this week of a Harare newspaper editor could signal the beginning of a media crackdown by President Robert Mugabe, who has been angered by press reports of misrule and setbacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Following renewed flak from Zimbabwe’s independent media and a drubbing in the […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel An anarchic British pop group of the 1970s – called, I think, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Daa Band – used to play a time-travel trick on commuters on the London Tube. It involved the band getting hold of the newspapers from a particular day, say 20 years earlier, and then stepping […]

THE United Nations has evacuated its observers from the north-western Angolan province of Zaire, the national news agency Angop reported on Wednesday. It said UN peacekeepers deployed in the provincial capital, Mbanza-Congo, to protect equipment for the UN Mission in Angola were evacuated to Luanda, on Tuesday following an escalation in fighting in the area. […]

Julian Borger Basketball `Please say it ain’t so”, pleaded the headline in the Chicago Tribune. But the moment the city prayed would never come has arrived. This week Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player of all time, retired. The 1,95m gravity-defying Chicago Bulls phenomenon, who seemed to float high above opposing defences, his tongue […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD `She was my baby,” wails Bobba Rosenbaum at the graveside. The bowed octogenarian leans shakily on her walking stick. “I loved her so much. Oh Sarah, I’m really going to miss you …” The thin voice breaks with emotion. Rosenbaum’s daughter, Sonia Abrahams, stands beside her over the freshly […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week `God, yet another pooftah movie,” groaned a fellow critic at the preview of Turkish Bath last week. Well, yeah, gay and lesbian cinema is booming – even the studios are making films with homosexual themes. Universal Pictures made To Wong Foo, an inferior drag queen movie with Wesley Snipes […]

Marianne Merten Non-governmental agencies in Cape Town are growing increasingly sceptical of the police’s ability to end the violence in the Cape and many are formulating new plans to stop the conflict. Several observers said that at the heart of the problem was the increasing politicisation of policing in the Western Cape. In the run-up […]

Chiara Carter Several senior members of the New National Party are expected to announce their defection to the Democratic Party within a matter of days. They include three candidates on the NNP’s Western Cape list for the National Assembly, as well as several candidates for the province’s legislature. The DP is also expecting the defection […]

RETIEF Goosen, a member of South Africa’s Alfred Dunhill Cup-winning doubles golf team, withdrew from the South African PGA Championship after the first round on Thursday. Tournament officials said Goosen has a fractured left arm, the legacy of a skiing accident in Switzerland over Christmas, and it has not healed enough for him to continue. […]

SOUTH Africans tuned in to watch the launch of South Africa’s first satellite from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, were disappointed on Friday when controllers ruled the launch a “no-go” at the last minute. This was the second attempt to launch the satellite named Sunsat, which was built by the engineering faculty […]

Review of the week:Phillip Kakaza The Market Theatre’s new musical, Bozzoli … like Pantsula … like Mshoza, makes some essential observations about how dance culture has provided an antidote to misery in bad times. Conceived and directed by Thulani Nyembe, for last year’s Barney Simon Young Directors Festival, it was acclaimed as the hit of […]

allegations Thokozani Mtshali A doctor in Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, has filed a charge with the police against faceless culprits who are spreading allegations that he injected patients with HIV-infected blood. The police believe the rumours were started by people who are jealous of Dr Phillip Pretorious’s thriving private practice. Pretorious (50) has laid a charge […]

force Chris Gordon Details are beginning to emerge of a vast resupply operation carried out by Unita, as the rebels strike at the north-west of Angola. Jonas Savimbi’s rebels are now better armed than in 1992, the Angolan government claims. It is a claim borne out by Unita’s new tactics and reports of the type […]

Salman Rushdie: A SECOND LOOK We are celebrating the 2 000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, as Catholic cardinals and believers of all stripes continually remind us. Never mind that this will put Jesus in the odd position of having two birthdays in the space of a week (Christmas Day as well as […]

SOUTH Africa and Ghana recorded double victories as the two countries dominated the boys and girls singles events at the just ended International Tennis Federation junior circuit in Lagos. South Africa’s 18th-seeded junior Klassen Raven defeated compatriot Maleka Kabela 6-1, 6-2 to take the boys singles trophy. Raven later paired with Kaleba to defeat the […]

Edward Helmore Dreams of riches from entertainment bonds, to be secured against future royalty earnings, seem to be turning to dust. Japanese investment house Nomura Securities has closed the entertainment securities division in which it put so much hope. Its flamboyant head, Ethan Penner, has been fired. His partner in the scheme, former Eagles manager […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 9.45pm. SEVERAL hundred supporters of the radical Moslem organisation Qibla on Friday brought the centre of Cape Town to a standstill with an anti-Zionist march, but avoided a feared clash with police. The march, which police had vowed to stop, went ahead after Qibla won an urgent High Court […]

ABOUT 415 people killed in fighting last month between government forces and militiamen were buried in southern districts of Congo capital, Brazzaville, city hall said on Thursday. “The operation of collecting bodies is almost finished, although there are probably a few left inside homes,” city hall official Senga Petie said. Residents of the Bacongo and […]

Wally Mbhele and Justin Arenstein Discredited members of the Mpumalanga African National Congress provincial executive committee – including some who have been axed from the provincial government on charges of corruption – have sought to influence Deputy President Thabo Mbeki to oust Premier Mathews Phosa. According to senior ANC sources, the people heading a campaign […]