Staff Reporter

battleground On October 23 1942, the battle of El Alamein began. James Ambrose Brown, a young soldier, carried into battle a diary in which he recorded the horror of all he saw This year there will be no old soldiers at the graves of comrades who died at the battle of El Alamein. Like those […]

With the approach of Nelson Mandela’s retirement commentators will soon be offering their epitaphs on the political career of a president who will no doubt be long remembered as South Africa’s greatest leader.

WL Webb ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN: A CENTURY IN HIS LIFE by DM Thomas (Little, Brown) Somewhere in her great biography of her murdered poet-husband, Nadezhda Mandelstam quotes a 19th-century sage to the effect that “Russia exists to teach the rest of the world a lesson”. Whatever Freudian glosses one adds to his motivation, there is no […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Soweto police believe their “positive attitude” explains their higher conviction record for rape cases compared to their counterparts in other Johannesburg suburbs. Although statistics indicate a pathetic one out of 400 conviction rate for rape cases, a survey on sexual violence conducted in the southern Johannesburg shows Soweto police stations are streets ahead. […]

indifference Mark Atkinson in Washington When Asian currencies collapsed last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank came to the rescue with multi-billion-dollar bail- outs. Since 1985, when Tanzania began implementing its IMF structural adjustment programme, the local currency, the shilling, has devalued by 1 500%, yet the country will not qualify […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. THE new United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday voiced US support for President Laurent Kabila, and slammed Rwanda and Uganda for their “military interference” in the country. The comments made by William Swing on national television are the first to be made by a […]

Mandy Collins For those of us without children, the last time school fees figured in our lives was when our parents gave us a small brown envelope for the school secretary, while they grumbled that R20 a term was akin to extortion. Well, times have changed, and if you’re considering parenthood, or have just had […]

As the Nobel Prize brings attention to Portuguese literature, Stephen Gray looks at a poet with a South African connection Ten years ago in these pages, Carmel Rickard reported from downtown Durban on the unveiling of a plaque in honour of the centenary of Fernando Pessoa’s birth. This, in turn, was at the foot of […]

Steve Gordon South African musicians at home and abroad will be saddened to learn of the death last week of guitarist Russell Herman, who died in London, where he had been living since the early 1980s. Born in Cape Town in 1953, Herman grew up in District Six, and was an integral part of the […]

Hanekom The chief land claims commissioner says he is being made `a sacrificial beast’ as his remarks in Parliament embarrassed his minister, writes Wally Mbhele Chief land claims commissioner Joe Seremane broke his silence this week over tensions that have gripped the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights, saying that Minister of Agriculture and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 4.15pm. THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, a parastatal meant to boost the country’s international tourist business, is to confront President Robert Mugabe on his tendency to commandeer state-owned Air Zimbabwe aircraft at short notice, leaving passengers stranded. A number of industry players, including the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and the Zimbabwe Tourism […]

Howard Barrell and Stuart Hess Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma has vigorously defended her decision not to allow the state to pay for pregnant HIV-positive women to be treated with AZT, an expensive drug that could reduce the risk of their children being born with the virus. The decision by Zuma and the nine provincial […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Randburg’s public prosecutor struggled this week to determine whether he could prosecute the managing director of Legacy Merchant Bank, Douglass Fliess, on the bizarre charge of stealing a garden. Charges relating to the theft of plants and malicious damage to property were laid against Fliess by property agents Gary Bruyns Properties on behalf […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.00am. COST of local telephone calls will rise by a substantial 19,2% from next year, Telkom announced on Thursday. This increase follows rises of 25% and 28,4% in 1998 and 1997 respectively, making it the third successive year that Telkom will institute an above-inflation increase. The rising cost of local […]

Michael Metelits I admit it. I was a yuppie during the 1980s. Not just any kind of yuppie, either. I was the trade settlement operations manager for a small, but nonetheless venal, investment management firm in Boston. I sat on the trading floor and witnessed a great deal of what the Eighties had to offer. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.30pm. THIRTY young elephants at the heart of a fierce row about animal cruelty are to stay with trainers accused of inhumane treatment for at least another week, an official said on Friday. The plight of the elephants has divided organisations dedicated to animal welfare, some of whose activists have […]

Sharon Hammond Dispossessed villagers living near the Kruger National Park’s Numbi Gate may soon become partners in an R85-million Hilton International hotel. If the project is approved by Mpumalanga’s development tribunal and the Department of Environmental Affairs, impoverished members of the Mdluli tribe will be able to cash in on their heritage by having an […]

Anew TV documentary seeks out the person behind the `freak’ Sara Baartman, writes Alex Dodd `Can you imagine? You’ve become a rented spectacle. You’re owned by a guy who sells you to an animal trainer who then hires you out to scientists. And you return home to stay with his animals. There’s probably a trained […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

fears Barry McIntyre She may have healthy green eyes and a vibrant pink complexion, but this model female head could prove to be a headache for the cellular phone industry. The unchristened head, packed with probes and sensors, will play a key role in a 500 000 European Union- funded study to measure the electromagnetic […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD I have done some stupid things in my time. But spending the night alone in a haunted office building must rank way up there as one of my dumbest and most bizarre ideas yet. Yes, you heard right. I did say haunted and alone. It was so spooky. Every […]

borders Gregory Mthembu-Salter `Beware,” reads a sticker, “you may be swallowed by a pothole.” The advice seems apt as our taxi bumps its way from the Zambian copperbelt town of Chingola to the Kasumbalesa Congolese border post. At a roadblock, the policeman argues with the driver. The dispute rages until the policeman gives up. “He […]

Cocaine, whisky, grass, Dunhills, whisky, cocaine… Staying up all night with the bad boy of US literature is a trial. Marianne Macdonald lived to tell the tale Hunter S Thompson’s big things have always been raising hell and taking drugs, and though he is now 61, neither hell nor ill-health will stop him. He holes […]

Robert Mugabe is desperately trying to shore up the teetering Laurent Kabila, write Howard Barrell and Iden Wetherell Congolese rebels, flushed by their victory this week over thousands of government and foreign troops in an eight-day battle for the key town of Kindu, are regrouping for a two-pronged assault southwards on the diamond-mining centre of […]

A peace monument in honour of those killed in conflict in Thokoza is to be unveiled, writes Thokozani Mtshali Four years ago the East Rand was the scene of widespread political violence between supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Open gun battles raged between IFP-aligned hostel dwellers and ANC-aligned township […]

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo scored an important victory this week in capturing the town of Kindu, which Laurent Kabila’s government was trying to use as the launch pad for a counter-offensive against the rebels. But the victory merely underlines why that long-suffering nation cannot afford a military solution to its problems. What […]

Review of the week Brenda Atkinson There are several possible responses to turn-of-the-century ennui, most of which involve an element of exhausted backlash and sudden nostalgia for other, better times and simpler cultural manifestations. I, for one, am aware of a growing yearning for time-honoured and outdated rituals like thought, beauty and big-band ballroom dancing. […]

Stephen Moss Jos Saramago has finally received his due from the Swedish Academy. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is the first writer in Portuguese to win the world’s most prestigious literary award. “I am very happy for myself,” he told a cheering crowd at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I am also […]

Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH As you read this, many of my Nigerian friends who had gone into exile to escape from the wrath of the brutal dictator, General Sani Abacha, have either returned home, or are about to do so. Among them is Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in […]

Jean-Marc Ela: A SECOND LOOK The paradigm of bankruptcy has become the context for every analysis of modern Africa’s economic and social history. Samir Amin evokes this picture: “The 1960s were marked by the great hope that we were at the start of an irreversible process of development throughout the Third World, and especially Africa. […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Film release patterns are very strange. One week there’s a host of movies and film festivals opening, and the next there’s virtually zip to write about. This week sees only four new movies being released, in comparison to last week’s seven along with the feast of films featured in […]

Peter Makurube Pops Mohamed has been to the desert – again! Mohamed’s relationship with the desert people, the Khoi Khoi, has led to several important projects. One of these is the soundtrack for Zola Maseko’s documentary on Sara Baartman. Mohamed has long been a campaigner for the preservation of indigenous music, particularly that of the […]