CAPE TOWN did not come to a standstill last week, but there is still a need for us to remember.

I WAS a high-school pupil in India, 13 years old, walking through the school grounds when the bell rang. The effect was magical. Around me, people froze in mid-step.

Even boiling water puts out a fire -- old Indian proverb

WINNIE Madikizela-Mandela. It's not possible to mention the woman's name without evoking some sort of reaction. Almost everyone has an opinion about her. Not all of them negative.

I've never met the president's ex-wife.

Fairy tales are nice, but real life does not always have happy endings.

If a stealth bomber crashes in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

THE world, some of you may have noticed, has gotten to be expensive.

I've often been asked why I left Italy to return home. In this letter to friends around the world, four years ago, I explained.

Back in '86, in the week that Halley's Comet came visiting, Kate interviewed Tony Hambly, a geography teacher from a small town about 200km north of Durban.

You know who you are. You still think of yourselves as "white South Africa". Not as human beings, not as Africans, not as South Africans, but as "white South Africa".

And you do not know me.

Many of you think you know me.

This has been a strange year

THE world land speed record was shattered not so long ago. Perhaps this explains why 1997 screamed past before I noticed.

January: Algerian terror troops masquerading under the banner of Islam took one of the more gruesome lessons of their French f

"That's not flying, that's falling in style" -- Disney's Toy Story

LIFE imitating art -- if you look around carefully, chances are that you will stumble upon something that fits this mold.

These bizarre coincidences seem to crop up around me at the strangest times.

The age of romance is almost upon us, but right now, it's up in the air

Blame Telkom.

The Seffrican term for it is "semigration" ­ the belief that moving to Cape Town is a panacea

I was in the midst of a rather pleasant dream involving an AK-47 and minibus taxi tyres when the incessant trilling of telephone finally penetrated through the fog of sleep.

"Mffff,"