News/Politics

Submitted by Rumbi Goredema “Ain’t I a woman?” — Sojourner Truth A few weeks ago, Ncumisa Ngcukana was sexually assaulted at the Noord Street taxi rank because she was wearing a miniskirt. That’s the official version, at least. In the days that have followed, a bitter fight has raged between women (not just feminists, or […]

As changes in the overall political setting of the Middle East have occurred it is important to focus on Israel’s nuclear strategy as the former possibilities of the superpowers to control and fence in the conflicts in the Middle East have given way to new power structures. A significant asymmetry has developed with respect to […]

I would normally give you a glimpse of my working-class-like life, and paint you a picture of my bus ride this morning and the catalyst for my tirade that is about to follow. I would tell you about some DJ called Majota Khambule (aka Phat Joe) who, after hearing a story about a young man […]

Well, call me Mother Grundy, but I disapprove of sex at school. The report of the South African Human Rights Commission on school-based violence has me very worried. And well done to the commission, by the way, for keeping an eye on this particular issue. The idea of school being a hotbed of violent sexual […]

Submitted by Dylan Edwards In 1971, Stanford University Professor Philip Zimbardo enlisted a number of university students as subjects of what became known as the Stanford prison experiments. The purpose of the experiments was to determine the behavioural and psychological effects of imprisonment on ordinary people. At the beginning of the experiment, students were randomly […]

Mehdi Kazemi (19) is facing the Iranian gallows after a Dutch court refused to entertain his application for asylum. Kazemi will now have to return to Britain where his application for the same relief was rejected last year. As a result, he will be deported to Iran where his boyfriend was hanged for sodomy two […]

Submitted by Terence M Mashingaidze In Zimbabwe’s imagined Orwellian hierarchy of political consciousness and roles, the educated, those in the diaspora and the urbanites are more perceptive about politics and governance issues compared with their supposed uneducated compatriots and rural residents. I have heard on numerous occasions the exhortation by urbanites and those in the […]

Submitted by Olivier Jarda Joaquim Chissano was in the bush, mediating between a rebel group and a government in northern Uganda, when Kofi Annan announced to the world that Chissano would be the first winner of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. On the day of the announcement of the inaugural prize […]