It took the best part of 27 years, but the runner wearing number 2621 at Granite Regional Park in Sacramento on Wednesday, finally made it on to the podium at a global event in the state of California. Running in the 8km women's age 45 to 49 cross country race on the opening day of the World Masters Athletics Championships, Zola Pieterse finished second in 29min 19sec – 33 seconds behind Soledad Castro Solino of Spain.

When Kader Asmal became Minister of Water Affairs in the liberated South Africa he gave urgent priority to one small but rewarding project; connecting clean drinking water to the home of the widow of Chief Albert Luthuli, Nobel Peace laureate and one-time president of the African National Congress. He saw Luthuli, a non-violent Methodist minister, as his mentor. Asmal was noted for his robust criticism of the ANC government's drift away from the protection of human rights. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he had "served his people and his nation without a thought of self-enrichment or aggrandisement. Short of stature, big of heart and mind, he enriched us all."

South Africans are mourning a woman celebrated for her role in the fight against apartheid, and for her nurturing of a new generation of leaders.

Senior colleagues of Ed Miliband have backed his decision to address yesterday's TUC rally in central London, insisting it was important for Labour to stand up for the "mainstream majority" hit by spending cuts.

Nosizile Shweni's eyes glisten as she watches a coffin being set down in front of her. This is the closest the 81-year-old has come to seeing her husband Nontasi for nearly half a century. Inside the coffin is what little is left of him: a few crumbling bones painstakingly exhumed from an unmarked grave miles from home. Nontasi Shweni died at the gallows in Pretoria in 1967 aged just 36 and, until a few months ago, his wife could not even be certain whether he had been killed – let alone where he was buried.

The life of South Africa's most famous and most controversial woman is being adapted for a new opera, to open next year in Pretoria.

A full-bleed image of a line of naked black men, their hands raised to the ceiling of a grimy room, seems as though it must be a record life in a prison. In some senses it was.

The South African government has been accused of resorting to censorship policies reminiscent of the Apartheid era in a bid to silence its critics in the media.

The confident and handsome John-Luke Roberts, another of those clever boys from The Invisible Dot stable along with last year's newcomer winner Jonny Sweet and last year's main award winner Tim Key, is the kind of gentleman who could get away with murder if not basing his show on the slight premise of committing one.

Someone needs to write a book about Dudu Pukwana, the late South African alto-saxophonist who came to London as an exile from Apartheid and played sessions with John Martyn and Mike Heron as well as jazz.

One of the defining trials of the post-apartheid era in South Africa ended yesterday with the former head of the police force convicted on corruption charges.