Posted inSport

‘They want our children to suffer’

By PK Lee From where Esther Goba sat watching two football teams clad in “HIV-POSITIVE” T-shirts competing in a football tournament in Limbe, Malawi, she wouldn’t strike you as someone who is at the frontlines of the life-or-death match against HIV/Aids. But Esther, aged 53, is doubly affected: she has been living with HIV for […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Fancy footwork, teens and HIV

By Baikong Mamid It’s difficult going anywhere without getting caught up in the football fever these days. The World Cup is in the semi-final stage this week and I have to admit that the football bug has bitten me in a big way — even though I was never a football fan before. Now I […]

Posted inNews/PoliticsSport

A second chance at life

By Lungile Dlamini The Thwala family gathers around the small radio set to listen to the commentary of the 2010 Fifa World Cup tournament kick-off. The excitement in the little four-roomed house is so huge, neighbours walking past can almost feel it.   Like millions of soccer lovers around the world, the Thwalas have been […]

Posted inSport

Extra Time presents HalfTime’s HIV Conquerors

There are six African teams in the World Cup in 2010 — and another six in the HalfTime five-a-side tournament planned for Friday July 2 in Johannesburg. Swaziland is one of the determined soccer teams of HalfTime. This small nation, South Africa’s nearest neighbour in the Southern African region, and facing an even higher Aida […]

Posted inGeneral

From the bench, onto the field

By Marcell Nimfuehr In January this year I travelled to Cameroon to make a health promotion film that featured Sylvestre, a patient who motivates others to seek treatment. Sylvestre is a softly spoken man in his 30s and at the hospital in Akonolinga town in east Cameroon he is the master of the television set […]

Posted inGeneral

The South African samba: Can you feel it?

The World Cup spirit is felt everywhere here in Khayelitsha! Since I arrived a year ago from Brazil to work for MSF in this impoverished township near Cape Town, I have never seen the patients so proud as today! They come to the clinic wearing their yellow and green Bafana Bafana jerseys, so excited about […]

Posted inNews/PoliticsSport

Nobody calls it quits at half-time!

Truly speaking, the little I know about morality, I learnt it on football pitches. Albert Camus, French philosopher and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature. In four days’ time the sound of a whistle and crisp thud of a boot on a football will herald a month when the world’s eyes are fixed on South Africa. […]