News/Politics

So, former Fidentia robber Arthur Brown has decided to pull a Schabir on all of us and is applying to be further upgraded from the already comparatively more comfortable Pollsmoor Prison hospital to the luxury of a private clinic. Just because he’s depressed? Good god. I have always just assumed that every inmate is freaking […]

The presidential elections of 29 March 2008 in Zimbabwe did not produce an outright winner; and the electoral law required that a run-off election be held, which Tsvangirai decided to boycott. It requires no rocket scientist that given the election results of 29 March, Tsvangirai has no right to demand full executive powers as widely […]

If presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain becomes the next president of the United States, then, judging by his take on Georgia and his approach to matters military, we might well end up longing for the “peaceful” days of George W Bush. McCain — along with Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister — can be […]

Submitted by Pete Farlam I read three reports on murders recently, which made for disturbing but also compelling reading. It’s a bit like not being able to take your eyes off a car wreck: I know I shouldn’t really look and that it will haunt me, but I’m also intrigued as to the extent of […]

The 1920s are best portrayed by the collapse of lawlessness that plagued the US cities of Chicago and New York – much to the doing of arguably the world’s best known criminal: Al Capone and the rival gangs of Bugs Moran. The era of prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s in the US presented the […]

While the negotiations between the major parties on Zimbabwe’s future are ongoing, I have specifically avoided giving any commentary. This is being done to afford the negotiators every chance of succeeding while giving Zimbabwe’s starving masses the opportunity to receive aid. I therefore find the continued refusal to give the aid agencies access to the […]

Chief Lucas Mangope, of the erstwhile homeland of Bophuthatswana, once told a story about his childish indiscretions while wandering home, barefoot, through a watermelon field after a parched day tending sheep and cattle. Like all fallible humans, he became susceptible to the sweet lure of the bulbous fruit. Mangope told of his father’s admonition and […]

In 1992 the New York Times reported: “When he was still a policeman and not yet a mass murderer, Barend Strydom once stole a black man’s head from the scene of a highway wreck and posed for a snapshot of himself, the white avenger, holding the grisly prop aloft in one hand and a butcher’s […]