General

The gentlemanly fisticuffs that we’s seeing across the Sanzar universe at the moment, while first and foremost a battle for regional supremacy, falls into the shadow of a much bigger prize. Rugby World Cup VII begins in earnest during the middle of September but the majority of Super rugby players will tell the media that […]

By Steven Hussey One seldom considers that positions vehemently opposed to apparently unpalatable details of our beautiful, liberal Constitution are held by parties with seats in Parliament. But of course that is the case, and from time to time the rejection of South Africa’s values for human rights raises its primitive head. What an itch […]

Is it defamatory, and therefore illegal, to publish an image depicting a person who claims that he is heterosexual, as gay? This week the Constitutional Court apparently answered the above question in the negative. The facts before the court were as follows: two schoolboys published a computer-created image in which the faces of the deputy […]

I have a recurring nightmare, and it’s not the possibility that Patricia de Lille might pose for Playboy as part of some sort of commemorative election edition. No, this nightmare always involves something quite different: waking up to discover that I have a maths exam to write — and I haven’t studied for it. Maths […]

In an age when sophisticated new technologies enable engineers, architects, medical doctors, physicists and molecular biologists to simulate virtually everything that their respective disciplines pertain to, from building designs to protein molecules, the Japanese tsunami comes as a cruel reminder that there is, after all, something real out there. And this “something” sometimes behaves in […]

Stephen Grootes writing for Eyewitness News on Thursday confirmed that the Constitutional Court has dropped a bombshell in the lap of the government after ruling that the legislation disbanding the Scorpions was essentially invalid and did not give the unit’s successor, the Hawks, enough independence. Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke read out the majority judgement, […]

School one: As I approached my very first classroom now I am back in China, some children saw me through the window and let out a whoop as the bell rang. They surged out of the classroom ahead of their smiling teacher to swamp me with their bodies, hellos! and thumping my hands and arms […]

While Schabir Shaik, the former financial adviser to President Jacob Zuma, has been arrested by officers from Correctional Services this does not mean that the South African public should assume that his bail is about to be cancelled. Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula confirmed on Monday that Shaik had been picked up and taken to the Durban […]

It all started in India. The new generation, which had the great side of 1970 to follow as the last to represent South Africa, walked out on to Eden Gardens in 1991. It was India who offered a hand to a nation not yet three years away from the end of apartheid. Since then, South […]

After Bush, Obama was a breath of fresh air. A man who seemed smart, rational and decent. Of all these qualities the last is the clincher. Decent. That’s what you want from a leader. You want a decent man. A man who bears witness to the basic tenets that his country was founded on. A […]

President Jacob Zuma must be feeling pretty miffed right about now. I certainly would be if I was in his place. Even accepting — as our legal system has and we certainly must respect their decision not to proceed — that the president was not in any way involved in corrupt activities with Schabir Shaik, […]

The Presidents Cup is the rest of the world’s answer to the Ryder Cup. While the Europeans and Americans square off in the Ryder Cup, the Internationals, as they are called, are a team made up of the “best of the rest” from across golf courses the world over. South Africa has had strong representation […]