Yearly Archives: 1999

The Daily Mail & Guardian, online sister to the Mail & Guardian, is again the most popular news website in South Africa, growing a quarter in three months according to the latest industry-standard figures. The DM&G rated 2,034-million page impressions per month over the second quarter of this year, making it the first news site […]

Shaun Harris There is an estimated R20-billion to R25- billion’s worth of blocked rands in South Africa, capital held in the country in terms of existing exchange control regulations and mainly belonging to emigrants in Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom and Canada. For most of these people their blocked rands are a largely passive investment, […]

Hilary Fine Lifestyle It’s been a long time coming, but the Cosmo girl finally has a playmate. For Him Magazine (FHM) will launch in South Africa in December with Neil Bierbaum, formerly of Directions magazine, as its editor. The young, affluent South African man- about-town will soon have a general lifestyle publication to call his […]

David le Page The “wind event” which hit the Cape Flats this week probably wasn’t a tornado – but tornadoes may be hitting South Africa more frequently. Certain areas of South Africa, particularly the eastern escarpment, are already more prone to tornadoes. Tornadoes are a spin-off from the thunderstorms enjoyed by the Free State and […]

The tornado may have passed, but those left homeless are still facing a storm over housing, reports Marianne Merten Residents of the devastated Cape Flats areas of Manenberg, Surrey Estate and Guguletu are bracing themselves for a potentially long wait for new homes while politicians this week haggled over disaster relief until President Thabo Mbeki […]

identity Ebrahim Harvey A Second Look As tempting as it is, it would be a mistake to dismiss the current debate on who qualifies to be an African as simply a case of diversionary intellectual masturbation between black and white journalists, intellectuals and academics – as much as it has often come close to that. […]

Review of the week Brian Butterworth In Peter Brook’s play The Man Who, which opened last week at the National Theatre, we are presented with a series of neurological patients who seem, at first sight, to be impossibly exotic. A man with a detailed memory for 30 years ago cannot remember what happened in the […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North As could be expected, the claim by the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission for $777-trillion in respect of the enslavement and colonisation of Africa has produced quite a few titters. One Nigerian wrote on the Internet: “Is this some kinda joke?” And a Ghanaian wrote: “I am […]

John Matshikiza With the Lid Off The Lusaka accords, heralding the possibility of an end to the war in Congo, has finally been signed by the last of the several hundred different people who were supposed to sign it. It’s like that folk tale about the gang who stole a pig from someone’s yard and […]