Articles

It’s true, it’s official and it’s great news. Smithfield, our little dorp in the N6, half way between Gauteng and Grahamstown, is hosting a platteland preview of the National Arts Fest fringe. We’re inviting all fringe performers, musicians, visual artists etc who...

TOP police officials regularly put their feet where their mouths should be when appearing in person at the Marikana inquiry, but even when their legal representatives speak for them in court they don’t do much better. Just ask Steven Mothoa whose case against the...

THANKS to an invitation from the University of Pretoria I’ve been having fun teaching a law course to journalism honours students. Something we discussed is that legal documents are worth examining for possible stories beyond the issue in dispute. For example...

This is the story of a judge, a Turkish grande dame, a rich young man, an ostentation of peacocks – and a cherry tree. And like George Washington in the famous story, I do not lie. At the centre of my tale, one of a dispute between two property owners united in their...

GET your cameras out! At last there’s something ordinary residents of Smithfield – and any visitors to the town – can do about environmental villains as well as law enforcement officials who watch with their arms folded. The ‘Clean and Green Free State Campaign’ has...

A ‘tourism protector’ is the brainchild of the government’s new draft Tourism Bill. It’s one of the features of the proposed new legislation that could end up establishing a new empire for someone, and costing the earth. But do we need it? Do YOU need it? Would it...

A NEW judgment has left me feeling greatly embarrassed about the way the legal profession must seem to an ordinary woman whose husband died in an accident almost 10 years ago. The story is one of catastrophic proportions for the widow, Yoliswa Eunice Mlenzana. But...

THE terrible fate of Anene Booysen was in my mind as I read the latest court decisions this week. So it’s not surprising that John N’s appeal judgment caught my eye – even though it was marked ‘Not Reportable’. It’s a case from the High Court in Grahamstown where N,...

So that’s where our tourism taxes are going: the latest edition of the Free State Business Bulletin reports that the Provincial Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) believes that the Council of Free State Tourism (FST) is nothing more than ‘a circus’. Its...

Smithfield may be a tiny dorp, but it’s strategically located along the N6, half way between the Eastern Cape coast and Gauteng. That means it’s not just townspeople who are dismayed and angry at the pace of work: it’s just as much a problem for the thousands of...