This is just crazy: Helen Zille attacked by an angry mob, which threw stones and half-bricks at her car as she tried to leave:

Zille said she would demand police protection before going into townships again after receiving a head injury at the meeting in Crossroads on Saturday. She said she had also laid a charge [...]

After months of political deadlock, it appears a breakthrough of sorts has been achieved with the appointment of a new Prime Minister of Iraq.
Jawad al-Malaki, a Shia negotiator, now has 30 days to form a government, which will likely be a national unity government with key posts filled by Sunnis and Kurds as well as [...]

On Wednesday I stated that the Jacob Zuma rape trial is over. In reality, is only the defence’s case is over; the prosecution still needs to make their closing argument, which should take take place on April 26 and 28.
I stand by my prediction of the verdict, though.

Watch in amazement as Jon Qwelane uses the phrase “researchers/statisticians from hell!” five times in a 450-word column.
I’m not even going to bother critiquing the contents the column, an angry polemic directed at Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser and “researchers/statisticians” who have criticised Zuma’s endorsement of shower water as a tool for preventing HIV transmission (and [...]

The latest issue of Jane’s Defence Weekly has a brief article on yet another notable success by Denel Land Systems Lyttleton (formerly LIW), the division responsible for the company’s artillery products.

This time, the latest variant of the company’s G6 howitzer, the G6-52L, has set a new range record for tubed artillery systems, propelling a shell [...]

Sometimes it’s worth looking in on the philosophical and ideological health on the left wing of the political spectrum. Despite the preponderance of crackpots spouting ludicrous conspiracy theories on the Internet (the right has its own examples of these types as well) one positive indicator seems to have emerged in the form of the Euston Manifesto.
The [...]

Philips is filing for a patent for a device for television sets that will force viewers to watch adverts and Peter Pollack rightfully ridicules the idea. Unfortunately I suspect the SABC will try to either come up with a similar scheme or propose that only television sets enabled with the damned device should allowed to be sold locally – [...]

The Zuma rape trial is officially over. One can almost hear the scores of tabloid journalists crying into their beer, although they still have the verdict to look forward to. We should know the verdict within a few days, but in the meantime, here are my personal predictions on how this will all pan [...]

Gold has touched $620/ounce with a 4.6% increase in the last 24 hours while Brent crude has hit a new all time high of $72/barrel at the time of writing this on the back of increasing tensions around Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. It therefore seems that speculation is rampant in the commodity markets.
However, while some fundamentals suggest that gold may [...]

Here’s a question to ponder: why is the ANC so obsessed with ruling Cape Town? In the grand scheme of South African politics, the mayorship hardly matters: it doesn’t alter the reality of the party’s massive victory in the last presidential election, nor its majorities in both houses of parliament that allow it to amend [...]

The Economist ran a measured feature on South Africa a few weeks back, which is recommended reading for pessimists and optimists alike. However John Kane Berman also provided a sanguine and condensed contribution to Business Day on a similar theme and on behalf of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
It’s symbolic that per a Rand GDP per head measure [...]