Articles

FIVE judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal have laid it on the line: the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions has behaved in the SpyTapes fiasco in a manner that is not worthy of the office. The court added, “Such conduct undermines the esteem in which the...

NO-ONE at the Platteland Preview festival in Smithfield this year will easily forget the opening night. Church bells ringing across the veld, marimba players regaling us with great jazz outside a fabulous venue, new and old friends, good food and drink. And then the...

AT least some of the novels I haven’t yet written are set in the border areas between the Free State and Lesotho. One shouldn’t give away too much of a pending plot, but there’s plenty of scope round here for illicit diamond dealing, gun running and other kinds of...

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,...