THE ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting this weekend may signal that the organisation is finally determined to address the ongoing crisis in the Eastern Cape. It is expected that Premier Nosimo Balindlela will be redeployed in a diplomatic posting and that the process of restoring unity in the province and, critically, addressing the significant challenges in service delivery will correctly be prioritised....

Living Large, with Charmain Naidoo

I LOVE my birthday. I‘m known in my friend circle as The Birthday Brat because I make a huge thing out of it, ensuring that those who love me are in no doubt that I need to be pampered, spoilt, gifted, flowered and adored....

Weekend Window, with Keith Bell

WHEN I was a boy I had a stick. This was no ordinary stick. It was, for a time, my best friend. Not just handy for long mountain walks, my stick (with a little boy‘s imagination) could be magically transformed into Excalibur, the mightiest sword in the kingdom as my brother Graham and our misfit mates played knights in shining armour in the forest near the little English village in which we grew up....

Thabisi Hoeane

THE disturbing revelation that around a third of students who enter tertiary institutions do not complete their studies is shocking – although it does not come as a surprise to those who are in this sector....

Wyndham Hartley

SUDDENLY, it was not there any more – Oxford Road in Johannesburg, that is. It had collapsed into the Gautrain tunnel. The army of experts building the Gautrain said there was no need to worry because underground train systems under construction in other parts of the world had suffered similar problems at various stages. What?...