Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 8.300pm. A STRIKE by thousands of municipal workers over non-payment of their October salaries turned violent on its second day on Saturday. On Friday workers found their pay had not been credited despite an announcement by a Harare city council spokesman on national radio that by Saturday they would be […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Kinshasa and Lusaka | Sunday 10.30pm. AUTHORITIES in the Democratic Republic of Congo have confiscated the passport of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who was due to fly to Brussels at the weekend. DRC immigration officials gave no explanation for the confiscation. During his trip, Tshisekedi was to have addressed the European Parliament. Tshisekedi, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dar es Salaam | Sunday 9.30pm. BALLISTIC experts have impounded a device suspected to have been used in mixing chemicals which formed the bomb that destroyed the United States Embassy in Dar es Salaam on August 7, the Tanzanian Daily Mail has reported. It is not known, however, whether the device was one […]

KATE BURLING, Walvis Bay | Friday 10.30pm. WALVIS Bay’s future as the industrial heart of Namibia is being blighted by sour industrial relations, wildcat strikes and a cavalier attitude towards the process of tripartite negotiation, a senior Swapo MP warned yesterday. Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry Wilfried Emvula delivered his stern message to some […]

Friday night: Swapna Prabhakaran My weekend sort-of starts on a Thursday afternoon, and my Fridays are usually earmarked as a day to chill and catch up with friends. As the sun sets on the weekend traffic heading out of Durban city, we avoid rush hour altogether by driving into town to meet at the Bat […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 7.00am. EASTERN Province thrashed Boland by 62 runs in their Standard Bank League limited-overs cricket match at St George’s Park on Wednesday night, with their bowlers particularly devastating. Eastern Province scored 224 in their alotted 45 overs, with Louis Koen, Dave Callaghan and Mark Rushmere playing good innings. Koen again […]

Keith Devlin For about R5-million you can buy the earliest known account of the idea that inspired Archimedes to run naked down the street shouting “Eureka”. On October 29, Christie’s New York auction house will sell the manuscript that is the only source for Archimedes’s treatise, On the Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the only […]

CD of the week: Shaun de Waal Bob Dylan sure started something when he allowed previously unreleased material and outtakes to be released as The Bootleg Series in 1991. The huge success of that collection encouraged the likes of The Beatles, who, once they’d finally wound up their legal wranglings, released all their leftover bits […]

Ken Barris THE LOSTNESS OF ALICE by John Conyngham (Ad Donker) The Lostness of Alice, the third novel by KwaZulu-Natal author John Conyngham, is placed on the cusp of South Africa’s transition. FW de Klerk is still in power, negotiations are proceeding in fits and starts, and the pariah status of the country is only […]

Andy Capostagno : Cricket Contrary to what you may have thought, the cricket season began this week. Specifically it began on Tuesday night at around 7.30pm in the Long Room at the Wanderers, the occasion being the launch of The Mutual and Federal South African Cricket Annual 1998. The provinces have been applying WD40 to […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Embattled Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila ignored his advisers and allies this week by snubbing a comprehensive peace offer from the rebels that could have ended the war that is tearing Central Africa apart. The offer, which was confirmed by high- level sources, was made to Kabila last week, hours after […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Tzaneen farm workers Jonas Maluleke (26) and Daniel Sono (28) have been waiting behind bars for a year to get their day in court in the Northern Province. Since they first appeared in court in October 1997, their trial on charges of rape and assault of a 25-year-old woman has been […]

Poor West African fishermen, prevented by an international treaty from fishing off their own shores, are forced to buy their own sardines in European cans, reports Paul Brown Mauritanian fishermen sit in the harbour gazing out to sea. In the distance, where Africa bulges out into the Atlantic, they watch sunlight glinting off other men’s […]

Ferial Haffajee A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but the jury’s out on whether Gear in any other guise is still the same economic policy. The African National Congress has won cheers (from its communist and trade union partners) and provoked jibes (from business and its press) with its stated intention […]

Phillip Kakaza Can art depict a people’s identity? This was a question that I kept toying with after viewing the San Art exhibition now showing at Absa Art Gallery in downtown Johannesburg. At first the bright, multi-hued surfaces seem almost to resist analysis. One is totally taken in by the surface qualities of colour and […]

Andrew Worsdale : Movie of the week If, like myself and many others, you are tired of African-American films that are full of violence, drugs and depressing representations of the black community, you’ll take a shine to Eve’s Bayou. The story revolves around a 10-year-old girl who seems to have the perfect family: a father […]

He’s the eternal optimist, the affable family man who happens to be a sex-god superstar. Yet still he doesn’t feel loved. He spoke to Miranda Sawyer Ewan McGregor is one of the most extraordinary people you could ever meet; but what is startling about him is his delightful, dumbfounding ordinariness. His freakish normality. Richard E […]

Mark Rozzo THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE by Simon Winchester (Viking) In 1879, James Murray, an expert on the dialects of his native Scotland and the recently appointed editor of The New Dictionary on Historical Principles, called for volunteers from Britain, the United States and the colonies to help create the first complete dictionary of the […]

Alex Duval Smith Hundreds of people have been killed along the Nigerian coast, tens of thousands have been forced from their homes, and oil production – crucial to the country’s economy – has been cut by a quarter by an escalation of unrest that shows signs of civil war. The conflict began a month ago […]

Wally Mbhele Before his arrest in Mozambique eight months ago, foreign affairs official Robert McBride was approached by Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga’s representative to take over from former MEC for safety and security Jessie Duarte. McBride is understood to have turned the offer down, citing his commitment to his foreign affairs job. But since his […]

Duncan Mackay : Athletics When Tegla Loroupe returned to Kenya after winning the New York City Marathon in 1994, a party was organised and the villagers presented her parents with nine cattle, 16 sheep and some land. Yet it was the words of the women in her tribe she still values the most. “You did […]

connection’ Belinda Beresford The sound and fury of the phone war between Vodacom and MTN over whose signals are better has resulted in MTN being chastised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). For the next six months, the errant cellphone company has to submit all its advertising for approval before it can be broadcast or […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby Like a lot of other South African men, I was pleasantly amused by Suzanne Daley’s often humorous quips about how diffident we South African males have been when it has come to keeping up with the life-needs of the ladies in our midst (“I’ll Have To Ask My Husband”, October 16 […]

In his new book, Gareth Patterson describes for the first time the sting operation that blew the lid off the ‘canned’ lion hunting industry in South Africa In order to expose the illegal trophy hunting of endangered species and canned lion hunting, the Cook Report team had established a bogus trophy hunting outfitting company called […]

Anthony Orliange Manga and Sori are youngsters about to finish school. In the evening they meet, “to revise for exams”, as they tell their parents. Actually, they share amorous moments of tenderness in Sori’s car, or outside cafs. Tired of concealing their relationship, they try to come out. But under such dire circumstances they are […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Freetown | Friday 7.30pm. FODAY Sankoh, the rebel leader who waged war against four Sierra Leonean governments and described himself as a “man of peace”, was sentenced to death on treason and murder charges in Freetown High Court on Friday. The leader of the Revolutionary United Front launched his rebellion in […]

Chiara Carter The heat is being turned on alleged Mafia boss Vito Palazzolo, with moves to step up a police investigation and another extradition request expected from the Italian authorities. Palazzolo, who became a South African citizen in 1995, is on trial in absentia in Italy and was recently listed as a top Mafia figure […]

Wally Mbhele Plans for the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report were almost ambushed this week when the African National Congress attempted to use its power to prevent its publication. This followed the ANC’s blistering opposition to some aspects of the commission’s findings on the party’s activities during the armed struggle. The […]

Jack Schofield The lock on your front door could soon be so small you’ll need a microscope to see it. And if that sounds insecure, bear in mind that what its inventors claim is the “world’s smallest combination lock” will also be fitted inside computers to keep hackers away. It could also be used in […]

The Gay and Lesbian Film Festival turns five this year, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever, with one of the highlights being a local documentary on a gay activist Andrew Worsdale During the late 1980s and early 1990s filmmakers like Gus van Sant, Derek Jarman and Monica von Treut, together with […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 10.30am. PRESIDENT of the World Boxing Council Dr Jose Sulaiman said on Wednesday that he will ask boxing promoter Don King to stage the heavyweight unification title bout between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield in South Africa. Sulaiman said on his arrival in Johannesburg ahead of the world sanctioning body’s […]

Anthony Browne: SHARE WORLD As the financial whirlwind that started in Thailand 15 months ago engulfs the rest of the world, it is difficult not to be pessimistic. A quarter of the world is in recession, the United States and the United Kingdom may well follow, Brazil and China are struggling, while the Indonesian economy […]