South Africa

As South Africa gears up to host next year's soccer World Cup, there are plenty of doomsayers predicting the worst. If transportation shortages don't ruin the event, crime will. The beer will run out. Or the stadiums will be half empty. But no one expected an ugly plastic trumpet to dominate the controversy.

Sitting on a cheap vinyl chair in a cramped office, his desk topped with a small green-and-blue flag and a plastic ice cream container holding pencils, Magosi Tumagole could be a small-town accountant, not the royal elder of Africa's richest tribe.

Helen Suzman, an anti-apartheid activist and former longtime opposition leader in South Africa's parliament who was one of the few white elected officials to win the trust and respect of the country's black majority, died Thursday. She was 91. Suzman, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, died peacefully at her Johannesburg home, her daughter, Frances Jowell, told the South African Press Assn.

South Africans lined up before dawn Wednesday in chilly temperatures for an election expected to slightly narrow the ruling party's large parliamentary majority, yet still result in the installation of controversial leader Jacob Zuma as president. A large turnout was reported, and in some areas election officials ran short of ballot papers and had to call for more. Results were expected today.

Caster Semenya started to run almost as soon as she could walk. She played soccer with the boys in her rural village. At school races, she'd lap the other girls -- sometimes twice or more. Even then, according to friends quoted by South African news reports, girls teased her about looking like a boy. Semenya shrugged it off and kept on running. But after she exploded onto the athletic stage Wednesday in the World Championships in Berlin, beating her nearest rival in the women's 800-meter race by a whopping 2.45 seconds, the question was back: Is she really a she?

THE story of how the discovery of diamonds and then of gold transformed the agrarian backwater of South Africa has been told many times before, but never with more vividness, clarity and verve than in the engrossing "Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa" by Martin Meredith. Filled with colorful characters and fascinating events, this book has an energy and authority that will engage readers who want to find out about this corner of history.

The national police commissioner, who faces charges of corruption and trying to protect a convicted drug smuggler, has gone on extended leave, the South African president said Saturday. The National Prosecuting Authority said Friday that charges would be filed soon against Jackie Selebi, who also holds the largely ceremonial post of president of Interpol. Selebi has denied any wrongdoing.

Morlan Higgins sits in the first row of the Fountain Theatre, back erect, eyes meditatively focused on the stage. His character isn't present for the first 11 pages of "Victory," a new play by South African writer Athol Fugard. So as rehearsal begins, Higgins lingers in the auditorium, listening to the a cappella African vocals that serve as pre-show music.

African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma withdrew Wednesday from a charity fundraising banquet honoring former boxer Mike Tyson after being criticized by South African women's groups. Reporters arriving at the event were handed a statement from organizers saying Zuma "had been called away on urgent ANC business." The banquet featured an auction of Tyson items to benefit children's organizations. Women's groups had called on Zuma to withdraw from the event.

Across Africa, people know what to do when the lights go out: Life chugs along thanks to generators, candles, wood fires, paraffin lamps and windup radios. But South Africa prides itself on being a kind of "older brother" in sub-Saharan Africa, more modern, more industrialized and richer than the rest.