Staff Reporter

There is no prospect of a split in the tripartite alliance for the foreseeable future, writes Drew Forrest The African National Congress’s relationship with its union and communist allies recalls the marriage at the centre of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the din of battle masks the underlying strength of the bond. […]

Sipho Seepe is superficial and contradictory. He accuses the government of failing to deliver while he failed to deliver at Vista University Sebokeng campus. When Seepe assumed the principalship of that campus he promised to “guide the university’s curricular transformation, its social role and its place in the national and international landscape”. He also promised […]

Scientists are looking for funds to save the prints of the largest arthropod known to have existed on Earth Belinda Beresford Claw in claw on the edge of the sand, 260-million years ago giant water scorpions may have danced by the light of the moon on the borders of a primeval South African sea. Their […]

CRICKET Peter Robinson Here’s one for collectors of trivia: who’s the New Zealand cricket coach? Don’t know? The answer is Denis Aberhart who, like South Africa’s Graham Ford and John Buchanan of Australia, had no personal experience of international cricket before being entrusted with his national team. This is not a veiled criticism. There had […]

Rather than bore readers with another rebuttal to Peter Vale, those alarmed by his denigration of the success of South African relations with the United States might consider enrolling in Wits Plus, our university’s programme of evening study for busy people. Courses may not yield simple or easy answers to international challenges facing the nation, […]

Ancient manuscripts, which provide tangible evidence of African scholarship centuries before colonialism, are being rediscovered in this desert town, writes Shamil Jeppie Timbuktu is not a venue for any of the African Cup of Nations games currently being played in Mali. It does not have a sports stadium, not even a green patch to host […]

The festive season was a groundbreaking one for many online merchants, writes David Shapshak From a conventional business perspective, the startling news about Amazon.com last week was not that it unexpectedly made a loss, but that it had so unexpectedly turned a profit. The online bookseller is the ultimate posterboy for the e-commerce revolution; and […]

Thebe Mabanga and Bongani Majola run through a check list of President Thabo Mbeki’s undertakings President Thabo Mbeki will inaugurate the political year next Friday when he outlines the government’s agenda for the year ahead in his annual state of the nation address. How much of what he earmarks for action will happen? A comparison […]

Mike de Kock has propelled himself into a lead of almost R2-million on the trainers’ championship log by reeling in the big feature races during the Cape summer season. On Saturday the likeable Gauteng-based conditioner makes a three-pronged assault on the R1-million J&B Met over 2 000m at Kenilworth that is likely to strike fear […]

Traditional healers in Zululand have formed an unusual alliance in response to a growing shortage of plants and herbs Niki Moore There is a vast illicit market in Durban where many endangered plant and animal products can be bought. Mounds of roots, powdered bark and skins, teeth and entrails of rare animals are available to […]

Harry Pearson Ice skating has a reputation as a sport beloved of old ladies. The International Skating Union (ISU) fights hard to keep it that way. Over the past five years the sport’s governing body has taken action against male skaters displaying chest and underarm hair, women wearing form-hugging unitards and men donning tights, the […]

Belinda Beresford Aids activists ratcheted up the pressure on the pharmaceutical industry yet again this week by publicly breaking patents on medicines and daring the drug companies to sue. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Mdcins Sans Frontires (MSF), Oxfam and the Congress of South African Trade Unions this week brought non-brand name antiretroviral medicines into […]

BODY LANGUAGE David Cohen ‘There were five of us, all first-time fathers, having a drink one night when a beautiful woman walked by. I looked up and mumbled ‘sex’. Then someone else said: ‘I remember sex.’ Then it came out. When did you last have sex? Four months ago? One father hadn’t done it in […]

SERJEANT AT THE BAR The struggle of Rastafarian Gareth Prince to be admitted as an attorney has prompted three separate judgements from the Constitutional Court. This division between a majority of five and the minority of four (apparently two judges did not sit in the case) arguably provides a more interesting example of the different […]

analysis Charlene Smith If there is one thing South Africans understand it’s defiance. Civil disobedience is as natural to our psyche as breathing. The African National Congress tutored South Africans in defiance in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1980s they upped the stakes to make the land ungovernable. Civil resistance is building again in […]

Melinda Silverman and Barbara Ludman Change is pain or it is if you’re a Virgin Active member trying to navigate around your newly renovated gym. Members felt the burn last year when the new owner cancelled contracts and increased the fees; but despite threats of lawsuits and the flight of two-thirds of the members, the […]

Disgraced Department of Defence procurement chief Shamin “Chippy” Shaik has been let off with a slap on the wrist after his earlier conviction on disciplinary charges of misconduct. Shaik was convicted a fortnight ago of leaking confidential documents. The disciplinary inquiry, headed by Zam Titus, outgoing Director General in the Department of Provincial and Local […]

The vast majority of health MECs are in favour of a rapid roll-out of nevirapine, but the minister will play a pivotal role in the final decision Belinda Beresford and Jaspreet Kindra The government looks set to buckle under remorseless internal and external pressures and allow pregnant women country-wide access to the drug that could […]

In respect of the rapid decline in the value of the rand in November and December one is surprised that no mention is made by South African economists and analysts that the decline commenced on the first trading day after Dimension Data wrote off $3,5-billion of investments in the United States. In the wake of […]

Getting the good stuff Riaan Wolmarans It’s a shame to see how often artists (or their money-hungry record companies) bring out a best-of compilation after the artist has only had two or three hits off, say, two albums. Thankfully there are worthy exceptions to this rule. Out now is Every Now and Then:The Best so […]

IRAQ and Sudan aim to set up a free trade zone, Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh said Monday at the start of a visit by Sudanese Foreign Trade Minister Abdel Hamid Mussa. “The creation of a free trade zone between Iraq and Sudan and the means to expand commercial cooperation between the two brotherly […]

The Inkatha Freedom Party appealed to the Northern Cape government on Wednesday to supply the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine to state hospitals in the province. “It is morally unjustifiable to withhold anti-retrovirals from pregnant mothers and their unborn children. “Withholding can be seen as a crime against humanity and our future generation,” provincial IFP leader Hennie […]

GHANA’S national flag-carrier Ghana Airways, facing mounting debts and an inability to break even, is on the brink of collapse, the company’s acting chief executive has said. Ghana Airways, which employs 1 400 people, is saddled with $150-million worth of debt, Kofi Kwakwa told the state-owned Daily Graphic in an interview published on Monday. He […]

TONGAAT-Hullett’s Sugar Personnel Services offices outside Tongaat north of Durban have been gutted by a fire, SABC radio reported on Tuesday. The fire broke out just after 5pm on Monday afternoon. It was brought under control, but debris was still falling from the ceiling on Tuesday morning. Parts of the building was also still smouldering. […]

PHILIPPE BERNES-LASSERRE, Johannesburg | Wednesday THE economy in South Africa, as other emerging markets, has taken knocks after last year’s attacks in the United States and amid fears of global recession, but the worries here are stagnation in growth and employment rather than an Argentina-style crisis. The rand sharply depreciated against key world currencies in […]

Copenhagen, Harare | Thursday AS Denmark signalled it’s intention to cut aid to Zimbabwe, and other nations maintained by ‘dictators’, Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge slammed the European Union and the Commonwealth for threatening sanctions, accusing the bodies of perpetuating “an archaic colonial relationship”. Mudenge’s comments were the first official government reaction to an EU […]

FIENIE GROBLER and NOMBUSO DLAMINI, Durban | Wednesday KWAZULU-Natal traditionalists are reverting to virginity testing to control sexual behaviour and HIV/Aids but Western doctors and social workers believe it is a degrading custom that encourages the rape of young girls. Gender and human rights activists are increasingly denouncing the practice the public inspection of girls’ […]

Pretoria | Wednesday SOUTH African inflation rose to 4,6% in December compared to 4,3% in November, the government’s statistics service noted on Tuesday, blaming the rise on annual increases in food, health, fuel, transport and power prices. Statistics South Africa said the annual percentage change in the consumer price index CPIX, excluding the interest rate […]

A SEVEN-year-old lioness named Lea who spent the first years of her life in an Italian zoo eating pasta left Rome on Thursday headed for South Africa where she is to be released into a game park. “She’s a real kitten, she even eats pasta,” one of her keepers told the Italian Telenews agency before […]

Lagos | Wednesday A MOB in Nigeria’s main city of Lagos lynched three policemen who killed a bus driver and conductor after they refused to pay extortion money at a police checkpoint, witnesses said on Wednesday. The crowd attacked the policemen late on Tuesday after they shot dead the bus driver and his conductor in […]

PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Lagos | Wednesday IN a country where building maintenance has rarely been a priority and concern for public safety often appears minimal, the disaster in Lagos this week was an accident just waiting to happen, analysts said on Wednesday. “I can hardly find a justification for keeping materials of such an explosive nature […]