Staff Reporter

I have been a regular reader of your newspaper since it began and many are the pages from it which have been stapled to the walls of my multicultural classrooms. You consistently present alternative positions to generate debate and discussion. Over time, though, questions arise for which we don’t appear to be able to find […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pietermaritzburg | Tuesday 5.30pm. THE touring West Indies have drawn their four day match against South Africa “A” at the Pietermaritzburg Oval on Tuesday. The Windies were pushed along to 95/3 with a quick second-wicket partnership of 62 off just 80 balls before bad light stopped play as on the previous days. All […]

SOUTH AFRICAN road deaths totalled 455 on Wednesday from December 1, according to Johann Kilian of Arrive Alive. The toll stands at 151 drivers, 167 passengers and 137 pedestrians. The season has brought 313 fatal accidents. Most of the road deaths were reported in KwaZulu-Natal, with 90, followed by 67 in Gauteng, 59 in the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Tuesday 5.45pm. UNITA rebels in Angola were on Tuesday shelling the strategic town of Kuito, in the central Bie province, where several dead and wounded were reported. Shelling continued late into the morning. Numerous people were wounded when the Sao Jose de Clunny secondary school was hit, while bodies lay on […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, The Hague | Tuesday 12.00pm. THE Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing case will only face trial in an “international court,” Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said in an interview with Dutch television broadcast on Monday. This means a trial by Scottish judges is out of the question. “An international court is the solution, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, | day 11.00m. SIERRA Leonean rebels launched an attack some 30km from the capital on Tuesday, the commander of the Nigerian-led intervention force, Ecomog, reported. General Timothy Shelpidi said the attack took place in Waterloo, which lies at a strategic junction linking the Freetown peninsula to the country’s interior. In a radio broadcast, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 8.00pm. THE South African Footplate Staff Association, a traditional bastion of white workers, announced on Friday that it has merged with black trade union the Democratic Labour Union of South Africa. The new union which represents Transnet workers will take Safsa’s name, secretary-general of the merged union Chris de Vos […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 2.00pm. THE Pan Africanist Congress is to dissolve its military wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army. SABC television reported on Saturday that the party decided at a pre-election congress in Johannesburg on Saturday that the Apla, which suspended its armed struggle in 1994, will be formally dissolved next year. It […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cairo | Sunday 1.30pm. PROTESTS gatherings against the United States and British air attacks on Iraq were held in Libya and Morocco on Sunday. More than 10000 Libyans gathered in Tripoli’s central Green Square on Sunday to show solidarity with Iraq, brandishing green flags and portraits of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi, who was […]

Jim McClellan surfs his way to spirituality on the Web Looking to live up to the proclamations of business experts, who have declared that this Christmas online shopping will cross over to the mainstream (at least in the United States), Net retailers seem to be going all out to exploit the seasonal spirit. However, there […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Faisalabad | Friday 5.00pm. HEAVY fog has wiped out play for a second day in the third and final cricket Test between Pakistan and Zimbabwe Friday. The home team did not turn up at the stadium at all while the tourists left the stadium after lunch when the umpires called off the day’s […]

Ratanga Junction – `the first full- scale theme park in Africa’ – opened its doors to a fun-hungry public this week. Dave Chislett dared to ride the Cobra roller-coaster As one approaches the main gates to Cape Town’s Ratanga Junction the first feelings of unreality begin to set in. I mean, how many people do […]

jail? If ever there was a case which exposed the shortcomings of the police, the prosecution service and the judiciary, it is that of the Eikenhof Three. The facts in support of their innocence have yet to be tested in court but, to the reasonable man, appear overwhelming. Their fingerprints were never found on the […]

An exhibition full of evocative images shows Africa as seen by African photographers, reports Alex Dodd >From its earliest days photography has been a dangerous medium. Since its inception last century, photographic images of Africa have mainly served to bolster Western perceptions of this continent as a messy tangle of jungle, starvation, exoticism, ignorance, weakness […]

Wally Mbhele The commissioner of prisons, Khulekani Sithole, is apparently running a private soccer team out of his department, using its resources to finance the team. The first division team, called Spartak, allegedly uses Pretoria Central prison as a home ground, and its coach and some of its players are on the payroll of the […]

Howard Barrell: OVER A BARREL What’s in a word? Probably not a great deal more than the user puts into it. The idea of rigid definitions is discredited, and the way in which a word is commonly used is little more than a rough guide to its meaning. So it is often not easy to […]

It’s bonus time and the best place to put your cheque is in the bank. However, there are some romantic alternatives, writes Belinda Beresford Christmas is coming, and the credit card companies are getting fat, so please put your bonus into the bank. The sensible thing to do with your Christmas bonus is pay off […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Nearly four months after Anna Dorothy Marabane’s husband shot her in front of two police officers, her family remains in the dark about what happened in the last few hours of her life. Her husband, Mokete Marabane, will appear on a murder charge in the Krugersdorp court next week. Family members hope many […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer A year that began disappointingly for Bafana Bafana with a Castle Cup defeat in Namibia ended triumphantly with victory over African champions Egypt in the Nelson Mandela Inauguration Challenge at FNB Stadium. The scoreline read 2-1 and it could have been 5-1 as Benni McCarthy fluffed a good chance, Thabo Mngomeni had […]

A Bill aimed at protecting indigenous knowledge appears to be more intent on gaining full control over the information garnered, writes Rachel Wynberg Legislation aimed at protecting and promoting South African indigenous knowledge has developed within the context of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s “African renaissance”. The intended outcome is to transform indigenous knowledge and technologies […]

strength stuns MPLA Unita’s improved military strength is of growing concern to Angola and its neighbours, write Chris Gordon and Howard Barrell Unita military pressure on the government has escalated dangerously over the past week, prompting deep concern among neighbouring governments. A powerful Unita offensive, including tanks and heavy artillery, on forces at Kuito and […]

Ann Eveleth The Hartebeespoort local council agreed this week to consider an innovative land reform plan hatched by local farmers, but Broederstroom smallholder Roger Roman vowed to continue his hunger strike “until the process becomes unstoppable”. Roman launched his hunger strike on November 25 in a bid to force the conservative local council to kick- […]

Preview of the week: Matthew Krouse Ennio Marchetto, the living cartoon strip, doesn’t need to press buttons in order to transform himself into the 50 famous characters in his show. Present-day computer animators may perform God-like acts in television studios that double up as laboratories for human cloning, but this Venetian mime achieves the impossible […]

Peter Dickson They come over the mountains from Lesotho on skis every full moon, invisible in their snowsuits, lethal with their AK-47s. In experienced bands of five, on a good night in the virtually perennial snow that erases their trail in seconds, they will drive off at least 100 head of livestock. For a time […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby When, in 1990, FW de Klerk made that watershed speech in Parliament, I wonder if he realised how, in doing so, he was snatching the rug from beneath the feet of innumerable and worthy white liberals, those long snuffled ranks of good souls who had been living so well for many […]

Ken Barris, who won the M-Net Book Prize for The Jailer’s Book, has just published a new novel. Shaun de Waal interviewed him via e-mail Your new novel, Evolution (Zebra) is not nearly as dense as The Jailer’s Book, either on the level of the prose and metaphor, or on the level of the narrative […]

The David Gleason Column This is the last column I shall write this year – and I have to say I’m rather glad 1998 has come to a writing end. It has been a brutal year for me personally, but also for many thousands of South Africans who have been trampled upon, caught by the […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week I once worked at Film Fun, renting out 16mm movies. With a host of films to choose from, my favourite was Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson. A gambling movie set in New Orleans in the 1930s, I must have watched it five […]

Fine Art: Tracey Murinik Willie Bester, Louis Jansen van Vuuren and Zwelethu Mthethwa form a rather unexpected and somewhat unlikely trio at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town this month. They have come together not only to exhibit their own respective works but also to collaborate on a number of pieces which […]

One defeat provoked less than subtle expressions of white supremacy, two released emotions constrained by the excesses of the likes of Eugene de Kock and Craig Williamson. Naively increduluous they asked each other: “You mean our side did that? Well there was communism you know.” On the Talk At Will show, where they feel most […]

Maya Jaggi: FIRST PERSON Carmen Legge is 35 years old. She is a successful insurance broker, she has long red hair, she owns a BMW, she has her own flat. And she has a boyfriend who “wants it four times a day”. In short she has everything that Bridget Jones, protagonist in Helen Fielding’s book […]