They’ve been murdered, raped and mistreated for 3 000 years under India’s caste system. But now the untouchable women of rural Bihar are fighting back – with bullets. Jason Burke reports Two scenes from rural India. The first from the summer of 1996. Bhuli Devi, a 30-year- old peasant woman, stands naked in a field […]
Shaun de Waal The Time of the Writer festival, held by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of Natal, is set to become a regular feature of Durban’s cultural life. This year’s festival, the second, began on March 1 and runs until March 6 at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre. The opening address was […]
Gerda Dullaart The KwaZulu-Natal Conservation Service this week launched a R1,3-million strategy to combat tuberculosis in buffalo that doesn’t entail killing the animals in order to test them for the disease. The service expressed its concern about the threat of buffalo TBspreading to cattle in neighbouring areas, and from there to humans. For the past […]
Coenraad Visser Never before have classical music lovers in Gauteng been offered a feast like they have this week. On Sunday, tenor sensation Johan Botha returned home for his first appearance on a professional stage since he left for Europe 10 years ago. And on Monday, the Orchestre National de France, with musical director Charles […]
Peatlands, which take thousands of years to establish, are being exploited to make compost and potting soil, writes Rehana Dada Most gardeners buying plastic bags of “environmentally friendly” potting soil and compost are probably unaware that they are in fact contributing to the destruction of valuable wetlands protected by law. Unscrupulous profit-seekers often gouge this […]
Mungo Soggot A labour relations arbitrator has ordered Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna to pay his former special advisor R170 000 in compensation for his unfair dismissal. Maduna axed his advisor, Thulani Gcabashe, without a hearing last March in the midst of the scandal surrounding the appointment of Liberian Emanuel Shaw II as […]
The organisation which selects and monitors members of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE)index is to consider rewriting the rule book governing the proportion of a company’s shares that must be available to outside investors. The Equity Indices Committee of FTSE International is expected to decide on a wide- ranging review of the whole “free-float” […]
Mail & Guardian reporter Adocument stored in the South African Historical Archives at Wits University has revealed that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s former chief adviser, Katiza Cebekhulu, told his lawyer that police tried to bribe and threaten him to implicate Madikizela-Mandela in Stompie “Moeketsi” Seipei’s murder. During a consultation with his then attorney Kathy Satchwell at Diepkloof […]
Social security grants should fall under the provinces, argues Amanda Fitschen The state of provincial government finances has received a lot of attention, especially in the past week as provinces tabled their individual budgets. While the latest published provincial revenue and expenditure figures indicate that matters are certainly better than they were a year ago, […]
Chiara Carter Tensions within the New National Party in its Western Cape stronghold reached the status of open warfare this week with the MEC for Agriculture and Property Management, Lampie Fick, at odds with the NNP chair of the province’s finance committee, Jeanne-Pierre Gerber, over the sale of state land. Fick, a senior politician close […]