South Africa

When Murray Alexander Schmoke Jr. told his family that he was going to South Africa as a volunteer English teacher, relatives worried about his safety but did not try to stop him."I was real concerned," Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said. "But I remembered my own experience at that age. When I told my parents I was going somewhere that they considered dangerous, I'd always say 'I'll be all right.' "So it was for the mayor's 25-year-old half brother, who confidently left for South Africa in January.

While the mainstream media in America love to wax poetic about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the sainted "Iron Lady" of the Cold War, it might be wise to remember the real person behind the carefully polished myth ("Margaret Thatcher made history by standing firm," April 11). Let's not forget that while she often played up her "blue collar" roots, her sudden rise to fame and fortune was actually bankrolled by her husband Dennis, a millionaire businessman, and that her economic policies resulted in the disappearance of countless small businesses and their replacement by mega-corporations like Walmart.

The cause of peaceful change in South Africa has taken a drubbing. While the government was preparing to negotiate the nation's future with the then-outlawed African National Congress, it was also subsidizing the rival Inkatha movement. The $700,000 in subsidies to which Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok admits is the smoking gun of South Africa's biggest scandal. A great deal of purposeful resolve will be needed from President F. W. De Klerk and ANC president Nelson Mandela to keep their relationship constructive.

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the "Blade Runner" did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Mr. Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial.

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the "Blade Runner" did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Mr. Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial.

JOHANNESBURG — There is an undertone of disquiet about the 2010 World Cup. It is difficult to pin down exactly, but the feeling is pervasive and clues to its identity seem to surface daily. It would be too much to blame it on the country's sad and complicated history, but the legacy of apartheid did come into play Wednesday. Readers in Johannesburg awoke to see the headline "History is on Bafana's side" emblazoned across the front page of the Star. The reference was host South Africa's game against Uruguay and also to June 16, 1976, when thousands of schoolchildren in Soweto staged a protest march.

Before him lay Siamese twins, their brains joined by an elaborate network of blood vessels. The myriad folds and planes came into view.He saw where the brains divided. He studied the features from every conceivable angle. He memorized the terrain. He planned his moves.This was Dr. Benjamin Carson's rehearsal -- done in the eerie space of virtual reality.Today, the Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon is celebrating that two 11-month-old boys are recovering splendidly -- and separately -- in the South African hospital where he and more than 20 doctors and nurses performed an exhausting operation that lasted more than a day."

Despite war in the Persian Gulf, in South Africa this week there was progress toward peace. After a day-long meeting on Tuesday, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi announced a major breakthrough toward ending a split that in recent years has turned violent and deadly. Since 1986, fighting between rival factions of South Africa's black community has claimed as many as 5,000 lives.The meeting, the first between the two leaders in almost three decades, may not immediately end the vicious rivalry between the followers of the two men. But the cordial atmosphere of the meeting and the two men's acknowledgment that their differences had been fully addressed without acrimony are reasons to hope that the healing process has truly begun.

As Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, the odd couple of historic destiny, received their well-deserved Nobel Peace Prizes Oslo yesterday, South Africa was not the country it had long been. During the week, it changed utterly.On Tuesday in Cape Town, exclusively white minority rule ended. Mr. de Klerk promulgated the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) -- 32 members (only seven of them white) from 16 parties -- to oversee his government. Unfortunately, groups of black and white conservatives under the rubric of the Freedom Alliance stayed out after negotiations to include them had failed.

Kip and Harrison Hart sit at the kitchen table in their Towson home, along with their mother, Barb Cox, and their South African "brother," Phinius Sebatsane, pondering how they're going to handle the massive amount of donations filling the dining and living rooms. Through the doorway looms 1,400 pounds of donated lacrosse shoes, uniforms and equipment, coming from Friends School and Hereford High, as well as other schools around the country. In Wisconsin, the St. John's Northwestern Military Academy collected another 2,500 pounds of donations, packed in 50-pound boxes.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library 's only document signed by Abraham Lincoln will be on display Tuesday for one day only, in honor of the Great Emancipator's 204th birthday. The document - the appointment of Walter Graham of New Jersey as the American consul at Cape Town, South Africa - will be exhibited in the main hall of the Central branch, 400 Cathedral St. between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., according to library spokesman Roswell Encina. The appointment was signed on Jan. 19, 1863 by Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Seward, and was donated to the Pratt in September 1940 by Mrs. William F. Bevan.

Nando's Peri Peri, a Washington-based chain of Afro-Portuguese restaurants, is expanding into the Baltimore area. The first Baltimore-area Nando's will open on Dec. 19 at the Waugh Chapel Towne Centre in Gambrills. The first downtown Baltimore location will open next spring on Baltimore and Paca streets. A lease for a third location, in Towson, has been signed, and more locations will follow, the company says. Known for worldwide for its flame-grilled, marinated Peri-Peri chicken, the first Nando's restaurant opened  in 1987 in Johannesburg, South Africa and has since spread to 27 countries and five continents.

"And now you hear the music, but the words don't sound too clear …" "Inner City Blues" by Sixto Rodriguez Former Baltimorean Craig Strydom has spent more than two decades searching for Sugar Man. And even though the music journalist tracked his elusive subject to a Detroit tenement in 1997, in many ways, he's still looking. Sugar Man is the nickname for Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter who was living in dire poverty in the U.S. without ever knowing that his music was being used to fight apartheid halfway around the world.

The French men's basketball team defeated Nigeria, 79-73, on Monday in GroupA play in the London Olympics. Ekene Ibekwe (Maryland) played just under two minutes off the bench in the losing effort and did not score, picking up up two fouls in the limited action. Teammate Tony Skinn of Takoma Park did not play. France will now finish no worse than third in the group. Also in Group A, Lithuania downed Tunisia, 76-63, after an impressive 26-9 fourth-quarter run. Sarunas Jasikevicius (Maryland)

And then there was one. Michael Phelps came up golden again today swimming his last individual race, the 100-meter butterfly. He has just his leg in the 400-meter medley relay left to swim in these Olympic Games - or any other for that matter. “I'm just happy that the last [individual] one was a win,” Phelps said. “That's all I really wanted coming into the night.” His gold medal in the 200 IM on Thursday marked the first time a male swimmer has won the same event in three straight Olympics.

Kip and Harrison Hart sit at the kitchen table in their Towson home, along with their mother, Barb Cox, and their South African "brother," Phinius Sebatsane, pondering how they're going to handle the massive amount of donations filling the dining and living rooms. Through the doorway looms 1,400 pounds of donated lacrosse shoes, uniforms and equipment, coming from Friends School and Hereford High, as well as other schools around the country. In Wisconsin, the St. John's Northwestern Military Academy collected another 2,500 pounds of donations, packed in 50-pound boxes.

The declaration of next April 27 as the date for universal elections in South Africa sets transition to a multi-racial society on a firm timetable. Electoral politicking begins now. Even though both black and white conservatives holding out for a federal system did not agree to the date, most of the 26 parties to constitutional talks in Johannesburg did. There now is confidence the election and the transition will occur.The agreement was part of the grand bargain President F. W. de Klerk and ANC leader Nelson Mandela hoped to present during their simultaneous visits to this country.

South Africa is moving so swiftly on some fronts that its biggest need is to catch up with itself on others. Nigeria's President Ibrahim Babangida, chairman of the Organization of African Unity, welcomed South Africa's President F. W. de Klerk as "the man who closed the book on apartheid." It will be hard for any government's sanctions to remain in place long after that.But for South Africa to move into economic leadership of all Africa, its peoples have to share power with each other. And that is becoming more difficult as the violence between Xhosa-African National Congress people on one side and Zulu-Inkatha Freedom Party people on the other grows worse.

If fiftysomething basketball players can spend thousands of dollars on fantasy camps with the likes of Coach K and MJ, if golfers make similar pilgrimages to the sport's birthplace in Scotland, why shouldn't hunters do the same at exotic venues in Africa? That is what Johnny Schickerling and his wife, Mariana, have been counting on, having converted their family's 37,000-acre cattle ranch into Agarob Hunting Safaris - a hunting-on-horseback operation in Namibia - more than 20 years ago. It is what Erik Terblanche, a former electrical engineer, was relying on when he started Amanita Safaris around 1995 in his native South Africa.

Theodore Neal "Ted" Holmes, who founded the old Chicken George restaurant chain and built it into a regional fast-food business, died of diabetic complications Nov. 29 at Sanctuary at Holy Cross in Burtonsville. The Jessup resident was 72. Born in York, Pa., he was son of the Theodore G. Holmes, a Cadillac dealership worker, and Sarah Wilson Holmes. He was a 1957 graduate of William Penn Senior High School, where he played basketball and was later inducted into the school's hall of fame.