The golden tots captured American hearts and gold medals at Atlanta 96. Worryingly … they’re back again Duncan Mackay To many people they epitomised the Olympics four years ago. It was impossible to be in Atlanta and fail to be struck by the huge publicity that surrounded the American women’s gymnastics team who won the […]
A LIECHTENSTEIN court has frozen the bank accounts of Nigeria’s late military ruler Sani Abacha on the request of lawyers acting on behalf on the Nigerian government, a spokesman said on Thursday. Various accounts at three banks in the principality were blocked on Monday, according to the spokesman. He gave no indication of the sum […]
Howard Barrell over a barrel By a stroke of good fortune, a conference on opposition in South Africa that had been planned for many months opened last week just four days after the formation of the Democratic Alliance (DA). It also coincided with Robert Mugabe’s attempts to digest the outcome of Zimbabwe’s general election. About […]
Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Myths fool thousands and religious myths fool millions. The old apartheid myths of the communist onslaught with reds under the beds and black cut-throats in the ikhaya are dead, but there are plenty of others around. Most countries acclaim democracy as a good method of achieving a government which represents the […]
Matlou, Connie Selebogo, Barry Streek and Evidence wa ka Ngobeni After having tracked down the whereabouts of prominent apartheid torturers enjoying life after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the Mail & Guardian went in search of the former regime’s quislings. They were apartheid’s puppets – the people who ran the nominally independent, corrupt homelands […]
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. […]
Africa’s dreams of its first soccer World Cup were shattered this week as South Africa lost its bid to host the 2006 event by just one vote Mail & Guardian reporters and Sapa The First World trampled Africa’s hopes of staging its first soccer World Cup this week as Germany beat South Africa in a […]
Peter Dickson With most of the land still in private hands and R40-million spent on the development model for the Coega industrial development zone, Portnet and the Coega Development Corporation (CDC) are using a worldwide study tour for a costly, last- minute rethink on the Eastern Cape’s “economic miracle”. Meanwhile, back home, South Africa’s leading […]
THE Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria on Thursday ordered that suspended Civil Aviation Authority chief Trevor Abrahams be given back his pilot licence, passport and other personal documents. CAA spokeswoman Merle O’Brien said the documents were returned to Abrahams after the prosecutor initially failed to provide a basis for the charges of fraud, corruption, defeating […]
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 […]