Staff Reporter

Two churchgoers in Australia duped women into taking part in sex acts during fake prayer sessions by promising to lift black magic curses on them.

Mary Rose took local craft-making to a new level recently when she facilitated workshops between Sotheby’s top international contemporary designers and KwaZulu-Natal craftspeople.

One of the most successful release projects undertaken by the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Foundation happened in June 1993, when two cheetahs were set free at the Hoedspruit Air Force Base.

For the past 20 years the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education (Care) and its director, Rita Miljo, have been rescuing, raising and rehabilitating orphaned chacma baboons. Though baboons are listed as a threatened species, they are still officially labelled "vermin" and are targeted particularly by farmers

At first sight, the edge of the Karoo may seem like a strange place to raise and rehabilitate tigers. A sanctuary spanning some 37 000ha between the southern Free State town of Philippolis and Colesberg in the Northern Cape was the site of the first attempt to breed free-ranging tigers in Africa.

Romulus and his twin brother Remus were allegedly brought up by a wolf in the forests of Italy. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, the jury of psychiatrists is still out on this one, even though the story allegedly took place a couple of thousand years ago.

The Kalahari Raptor Centre has featured regularly in the media because of its spirited two-year legal battle to save the lives of the three caracals. In the process, the centre not only saved the caracals but challenged outdated conservation laws that make it compulsory for farmers to kill certain small predators.

One of the longest but ultimately most successful battles fought by the SanWild Wildlife Trust was to save a highly endangered black rhino female from a "canned" hunt.

Even though it means agreeing to think like John Battersby for a whole 10 minutes, I count myself among the small handful of citizens who acknowledge the perspicacity and intellectual vigour of our miserably undervalued Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Some four years ago, in one of my Channel Vision columns in this newspaper, I criticised the pitiful standards of English in SABC television news bulletins. I commented that it was clear the SABC no longer comprehended the scope of its influence on language. Somewhere along the line the corporation had abandoned its responsibilities in this regard.

I dunno. It might be time to think about moving down to the coast again. Not just in the sense of those dark-skinned, sun-dried white tramps who used to hike down
towards Durban at the first hint of winter.

Last week saw a giant leap forward for corporate hegemony along with an equally giant leap backwards for freedom of speech.

And so we struggle to understand the brave new world we are entering. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who, along with the appalling Donald Rumsfeld of the US of A, has become the new front man for the New World Order, tells the world’s press that what the “alliance” intends for Iraq is a democratic order, and elaborates that this is an order that the alliance will “encourage” rather than dictate.

When all the passion has settled a few positive things will be seen to have emerged from what is still being miscalled the Iraq war. So far it’s been less a war than a walkover.

We are rapidly approaching the end of the first decade of rule under a written Constitution that aims to provide a meaningful framework for the construction of a resilient democracy.