Staff Reporter

‘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.

The rand opened firmer on Friday after the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said on Thursday that it would not lower interest rates and that the rand was still under-valued at R9,25 per dollar. The most recent calculation of the rand’s purchasing power parity rate is R5,84 rand per dollar, while in the first quarter […]

For my sermon today I would like to deal with three subjects, lust, lust and a little more lust. Did you know that when next February you pitch up to watch a match in the World Cup cricket season, you will be carefully scrutinised?

LoveLife’s advertising campaigns are up the pole. They are useless, ineffective, costly and obscure. That’s the message from some of the world’s leading Aids scientists and activists.

It’s tough to be a prophet in your own country. Bheki Mseleku has a list of credits and accolades that is as long as your arm, yet it’s hard for him to rustle up a decent audience in South Africa.

After the knock it took in the recent confusion over peer review the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) has been given fresh legs in preparations for major encounters it is planning with Europe and China next year.

The possibility of cooperation between the IFP and the DA appears to have receded, for now. This follows the successful Constitutional Court challenge to the ANC attempt to extend the protection of five members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature who crossed the floor.

The possibility of cooperation between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Democratic Alliance appears to have receded, for now. This follows the parties’ successful Constitutional Court challenge to the African National Congress attempt to extend the protection of five members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature who had crossed the floor.

In last week’s edition of this newspaper was told the appalling story of a primary-school child who had been raped by one of her teachers. The principal of the school was well aware of what had been taking place on his patch.

It’s hard to describe my friend Godfrey Nzamujo. He introduces himself as a humble Catholic priest (in fact a monk) and as an aside mentions his farm project in Benin, which, he adds, you should drop in and see some time.

Trevor Phillips’s return as CEO of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) was seen by some as the second coming of the messiah, but the man himself believes he alone cannot propel the league to greatness. Sitting amid the chaos of an office still being refurbished at the PSL’s headquarters in Doornfontein this week, Phillips said: […]

Police are probing fraud and theft charges against senior officials in the national Department of Health after it emerged that they might have misappropriated millions of rands meant to compensate mineworkers suffering from occupational diseases.

If South Africans made use of the Department of Education’s <i>Tirisano</i> programme there would be greater understanding of the curriculum and the educational transformation the department has embarked on.

<b>Obituary: Mark Chavunduka</b>. Mark Chavunduka, the Zimbabwean newspaper editor whose torture by state agents in 1999 served to focus world attention on President Robert Mugabe’s policies towards the media, has died, family members confirmed on Wednesday.

James William Kilgore, the United States fugitive who was arrested in Cape Town, was nailed because he remained in contact with people from his past. Kilgore, who has been working as a researcher, was sought by the FBI for nearly 27 years.

Sometimes you think it’s time for some of our top people to wake up and smell the coffee beans. The trouble is, us bottom people are in no position to tell them to do so. It’s rather like being a subject of the king of Swaziland.

SABC last week offered up what must rank as one of the most pitiful, the most crudely embarrassing images of "liberation" politics: the sight of senior members of the ANC welcoming Marthinus van Schalkwyk into their ranks.

With the presidential election campaign now off to an official start in Uganda, the gloves are coming off in this political arena that is not particularly well-known for gentlemanly circumspection.

So many things have changed for the better in Britain. And yet it seems that even though I am somewhat strongly disposed to give New Labour’s New Britain a New Stamp of Approval, the behaviour of the New British themselves often leaves much to be desired.

It might have been a little over the top for Paul Mukonyi to express his outrage at conditions in economy class by coming within a hair’s breadth of causing a British Airways Boeing 747, loaded with several hundred persons, to crash nose first into East African soil over the Christmas holidays.

So why, I hear you ask, did we not go straight to the airline for redress, revenge, compensation, satisfaction, or even explanation when we were dumped unceremoniously, yet again, at the wrong airport, several hundred kilometres short of our programmed and paid-for destination?

The French have always run their colonies with so much more panache than the bumbling British. So while the Brits continue to make a show of post-colonial regret the French sail on upon their imperial mission unaffected by guilt, remorse or self-doubt.