Andy Capostagno It should have been the best of times, but far too often it was the worst of times. Australians will not remember the cricket and rugby world cups of 1999 in such negative terms, but the truth hurts. Here were two tournaments four years in the making, on comfortable growth curves from successful […]

Fiona Macleod The pendulum swings for 594 plant species, 14 animal species, 62 bird species and dozens of insect species in Southern Africa at the turn of the millennium. Already in the past couple of centuries, at least 59 Southern African species are known to have become extinct. The list includes 53 plants, two butterflies, […]

Unless policymakers put their money where their mouths are, the position of women in the new century looks set to be as bleak as the previous one, writes Khadija Magardie Decades have passed and generations have grown up since the feminist movement first burst on to the world arena, promising women change and revolution in […]

Two thousand years of Christianity is too much, yet somehow not quite enough, argues Shaun de Waal The year 2000 looms. What are we celebrating, or about to celebrate? Two millennia of Christianity? Or a triumph of marketing in which we’ve forgotten the product but been dazzled by the catchphrase? Not that it really is […]

In the mid-1800s, it was derided by Europe as an ‘experiment in gross vulgarity’. Today, it bestrides the world culturally, economically, technologically and militarily. Christopher Hitchens charts the unstoppable rise of the United States Who looks at an American book?” asked the Reverend Sydney Smith scornfully in the Edinburgh Review of the mid- Victorian epoch. […]

It was a momentous year. The gold price collapsed; the first black Reserve Bank governor took the helm; the face of black empowerment was changed forever; and privatisation was propelled to the top of the economic agenda, write Donna Block and Mungo Soggot Gold, the metal that defined South Africa in the twentieth century, went […]

More than 99 years of scientific progress has been tracked by the Nobel Prize, writes David Le Page It is unlikely any scientist ever began research with an eye on the Stockholm academies administering the prizes founded by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel. But their stature and heritage has come to make them an incontrovertible map […]

Marthali Brand and Aaron Nicodemus Graham Armitage (63), radio, television and theatre personality best known for his roles in television productions such as The Diggers, Westgate and Shaka Zulu. Luis Argana (66), vice-president of Paraguay, killed by gunmen believed to have been sent by President Raul Cubas. Immediately after the killing, MPs voted to begin […]

The idea of a poetry festival in Timbuktu has been wandering since 1992 in the mind of Breyten Breytenbach, poet, painter and member of the board of trustees of the Gore Institute. This has been shared with other poets and kept alive throughout several years. It finally took place before the start of the new […]

Ellen Bartlett There has been a lot of speculation lately about what the Mail & Guardian plans to do regarding its tradition of designating a Bug of the Year – that is, naming the bug that has had the greatest impact in the last 12 months. The question, in short, has been: will the M&G […]