Staff Reporter

Whatever her failings, however dire her official felonies, there can be no reasonable excuse for the continuing and malicious attacks on Professor Norma Reid Birley, until recently vice-chancellor of Wits University.

Deputy President Jacob Zuma has refused to answer questions about whether he met a French defence company executive in Durban on March 11 2000. The Scorpions are investigating whether on that day Zuma met Alain Thetard and Schabir Shaik and made a coded request for a R500 000-a-year bribe.

The South African construction industry had a strong year in 2002, despite increasingly high interest rates, and analysts believe that the outlook for 2003 is even rosier.

Deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad has taken on Stellenbosch academic Sampie Terreblanche over his new book that says the ANC has sold out to big capital. Pahad argues that private sector capital is essential for investment in the economy.

South Africa’s Vodacom got into bed with politically well-connected partners in Mozambique before it won a licence to operate that country’s second cellphone network. Now one of those partners has been dragged into the controversy surrounding the assassination of journalist Carlos Cardoso. Vodacom this week said it had nothing to do with the selection of […]

Schabir Shaik, the arms entrepreneur implicated alongside Deputy President Jacob Zuma in a bribery scandal, was “explicitly warned” by Nelson Mandela not to misrepresent himself as doing business on behalf of the African National Congress. That was not the only time Shaik was accused of pretending to be something he was not. The Mail & […]

Total exports of South African bottled wines are set to grow by at least 20% to over 139 million litres in 2002, boosted by strong sales growth in the UK, Netherlands and other international destinations, says Wines of South Africa (WOSA) CEO Sue Birch.

By the standards of most Pakistan touring teams, the commotion caused by Wasim Akram’s announcement that he had no intention of playing in the Test matches against South Africa came earlier than usual (within 24 hours of the tourists’ arrival, give or take an hour or so), but amounted to a mere hiccup in relative […]

Undeserving: A Swaziland government official says the government might stop providing medical support to HIV/Aids patients. Senator Walter Bennett told a rally it was unfair to continue taking care of people with HIV/Aids because others were more deserving.

Nigeria?s electoral body said on Tuesday it had registered 22 new political parties, bringing to 28 the number to contest next year?s general elections. Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec), Abel Guobadia, told a news conference in the capital Abuja that three out of 25 parties that had applied for registration failed to […]

‘When I lift up this gun and I look down the sights at one of these baby-butchers, I know I am squeezing that trigger for God Almighty. Anyone who raises a weapon against those slaughtering babies is doing God’s work.

The South African presidency has given the fractious parties of the Congolese conflict until December 14 to get their acts together and bring the long drawn-out peace process to some sort of resolution.

‘We should do what the French and British motorists are doing," says my friend Ben, as we stare at the images of white mayhem on the television. "We should take to the streets to protest against these endless petrol price rises."

It’s official: Santa Claus, in spite of many bitterly disappointed children’s faces around the family Christmas tree each year, is the only guy you can really trust. Finland, home of Santa Claus is the most incorruptible country in the world.

It is my last day in Douala. I am sitting on the deck of a charmingly run-down little establishment, a wood-and-reed restaurant perched on wooden stilts on the river’s edge. I hide here from the tensions of the world.

Back to Jo’burg and the usual Jo’burg stories. Dinner conversation with old friends struggles to rise beyond the banal realities. These are just some of them: A man called Mangaliso comes out of a spell in Leeuwkop prison with a desire to live a reformed life.

I wish this nightmare would just go away, but I am sure that the actual participants in the nightmare wish for its ending with many times more fervour and passion than I, a mere observer on the sidelines, could ever muster.

I live the main part of my life these days in a limbo universe – a globalised, 21st- century version of the migrant labourer. My personal life, when I have one, is with my family in Cameroon.

‘He’s back!" the paper trumpeted on the front page. Above the caption there was a full-colour picture of a man with popping eyes and a moustache. That was supposed to be me.

We had already been through four different offices by the time we came to the office of the inspector of customs. The inspector himself was a man of imposing appearance – but in the shabby world of customs sheds, these things are all relative.

How interesting that the culture of the protest march has made such a spectacular comeback. Just when we all thought mind-numbing mediocrity had taken over from rolling mass action, the forgotten activists popped up in the unlikely location of Seattle.

The highway that strikes due east from the commercial capital of Douala towards the administrative capital of Yaounde is smooth and reasonably well maintained, although its two lanes are barely sufficient for the heavy volume of traffic that it carries.

In the rosy light of the dawn, a tall black man who carries himself with the coiled grace of a matador is mowing the beach. Well, I don’t know if mowing is the right word. The crude machine he is dragging back and forth across the sand in front of the sleeping hotel has no wheels.

It is the day of the Ascension. Or the Assumption. I am not sure which. Iam not schooled in these things. I don’t know what they mean, except that,like everyone else on this island, I am happy to take the day off from the rigours of the normal week.