Taban lo Liyong In the February 4 issue of the science journal Nature it is reported that HIV probably originated from chimpanzees and that the virus was transferred from these primates to humans. Chimpanzees in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are supposedly the culprits. But if HIV originated from chimpanzees, how was it transferred to […]
Mail & Guardian reporters Breaking the silence surrounding the realities of Aids is the theme of Aids 2000, the international Aids conference to be held in Durban this week. But it is likely that Aids 2000 will be remembered more for the “Durban declaration”: a document signed by 5E000 people testifying in their belief that […]
Terry Kurgan This project, though in every sense a development from Family Affairs (the work for which I was selected), doesn’t use my own photographs or my own children at all. I am using found family snapshots. Mostly from the Sixties – and all in colour. They could belong to anybody. And I am printing […]
photographs Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Aids 2000 conference committee has banned photographs by an award-winning Dutch photographer on the grounds that the images provide an excessively graphic insight into the dreadfulness of the HIV/Aids epidemic. The photographer, Geert van Kesteren, from Holland, submitted an application early this year to the committee to exhibit his […]
To paraphrase from a character in one of Toni Morrison’s great novels: “The trouble with these people is that they just don’t know when to stop.” OK, I admit it, I’m still smarting. Sitting in the centre of the African continent, staring out at its myriad wonders, I find myself still smouldering like the magnificently […]
Up to 25-million people are infected with Aids in Africa, according to the United Nations Aids Programme Khadija Magardie The continent with the highest number of people with Aids was chosen to host the 13th International Aids Conference. Altogether, there are now 16 countries in Africa in which more than one-tenth of the adult population […]
Guy Willoughby ‘I saw this medieval woodcut of Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge. Beneath the tree there’s an ape picking up an apple, a windfall, wanting to eat of the tree as well … Is this inexcusable, or ghastly and bizarre? That is the moment in which our play takes shape.” Basil […]
Angus Begg Cruising through the quiet Mpumalanga highlands town of Machadodorp, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire town had just attended its own funeral. Unemployed youths linger around the general dealer in trademark fashion, an attractive, period-piece church stands as a landmark in the town centre and an assortment of 4×4 vehicles pass […]
multiparty democracy Ebrahim Harvey left field The increasing convergence between the ruling African National Congress and the state, similar to National Party rule before, represents dangers for our infant and fragile democracy. This is so in spite of the fact that white racist rule is gone and we have had a non-racial democracy since 1994. […]
Margaret Court has no time to practise now she’s preaching Jon Henderson Margaret Court, one of the great Wimbledon campaigners, stepped back on to Centre Court last week for the first time since her playing days. Or, to be more precise, it was the Reverend Margaret Court who returned to the world’s most pampered patch […]