Articles

ALL roads lead to the Eastern Cape right now, and to celebrations of the National Arts Festival’s 40th anniversary. It’s even the setting for this week’s legal decision, with the drama’s central moment played out against the backdrop of that favourite student watering...

WHEN Smithfield’s new arts festival, the Platteland Preview, ran into trouble last year, someone asked if I’d been in touch with Ismail Mahomed. As a law writer, I could only assume she meant the late Chief Justice and I wondered at her faith that he could organise...

NATIONAL child protection week and I’m pointing fingers. Everywhere government exhorts: protect vulnerable children. So where were the state’s justice officials when Annah Ouma Mthimunye tried to get the maintenance she was owed so she could care for and protect her...

Here is the full text of the speech by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, given at the University of Stellenbosch conference on law and religion in Africa, 27 May 2014: Mogoeng CJ Law and Religion in Africa

IF vigilantes, working with the tacit agreement of the police, beat up witnesses and pay them to give false evidence, what hope do courts have of establishing the truth? This woeful state of affairs is not the nightmare child of a TV script-writer. It falls off the...

2014 Platteland Preview Programme (For more information, images etc go to the home of the Platteland Preview festival: www.smithfield.co.za) Friday 27 June *  4 – 5pm NGK Church Hall: Official opening of In Transit : A Bloemfontein group exhibition sponsored by...

YOU could read it as just another story of police incompetence. But it’s also about how one couple’s acrimonious divorce has financial implications for every single South African. It’s the case of ‘M’ against the Minister of Police, a matter heard in the high court,...

Trip Advisor, the international guests’ reviewing site, has tonight informed us that Trading Places has hit the winning spot in Smithfield for the second year in a row. The 2014 badge will be sent to us soon and then we’ll put it up on the site. Meanwhile, thanks to...

FUNNY the corners where discrimination against women still lurks, even in places where you’d never thought to look. For example, you wouldn’t expect to find it at the spring-water bottling factory of aQuelle natural and flavoured water, would you? –  especially given...

‘MR X’ wants to become an advocate. But he has a secret: some years ago he abducted his young daughter and they spent five years wondering around Europe on false documents with both Interpol and the South African police looking for them. Happily for all concerned the...