SOMALI gunmen last week captured 33 foreign fishermen said to have been fishing illegally in Somali waters and vowed to punish them under Somali law, according to local elders on Wednesday. The fishermen, who were captured off the the Somali Ayl coast in the region of Garowe, along with their 1000-ton fishing trawler, include two […]

In South Africa we should perhaps have called the Y2K bug something more indigenous – Tokoloshe 2000 would be appropriate, writes Gavin Foster Remember the tokoloshe? The little man with the tail who was blamed for everything that could possibly go wrong? When the goats strayed it must have been the tokoloshe that made their […]

world Mail & Guardian reporters Apartheid: The big A, institutionalised after 1948 under the National Party government, ensured the separation of South Africans. Under this idiotic system whites, blacks, Asians and coloured people were sorted in an extraordinary array of slots. Rights and privileges were assigned on a sliding scale, with whites on top, blacks […]

Free international and local currencies may soon ride roughshod over conventional cash, suggest David Le Page and Donna Block Anyone who doesn’t cash in all his or her South African Airways (SAA)Voyager air miles by January 15 stands to lose them. Just kidding! But the sensation of panic this possibility offers gives some key insights […]

Paul Kirk It would have been the ultimate New Year’s party – toasting in the millennium on board a ship once billed as the largest moving object in the world. But plans to rebuild the Titanic seem to have sunk while still in shallow water. Nearly two years ago, in January 1998, CEO of the […]

COMMISIONER of prisons Khulekani Sitole, under investigation by the attorney general for corruption and mismanagement, has announced the suspension of his alleged accuser, KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Thandiwe Kgosidintsi. Sitole said Kgosidintsi was under investigation herself, and was engaging in a personal vendetta. Meanwhile the Correctional Services Management Board, which met yesterday to discuss the allegations […]

When fame is an open book, Christ, Shakespeare and Lenin lead the list of icons who have inspired the world’s authors, writes Martin Kettle in Washington If fame is having a book written about you, then as the subject of no fewer than 17 239 books, Jesus Christ remains the most famous figure in the […]

THE death toll in the ongoing carnage on South African roads since December 1 had reached the 500 mark by Wednesday afternoon, Arrive Alive said. In a statement it said 500 people have died in 335 accidents. Of those killed 229 were passengers, 136 were drivers and 135 pedestrians. KwaZulu-Natal still has the highest death […]

At the bloody dawn of a new millennium, Jonathan Steele foresees no escape for the world from warfare and suffering that branded the 20th century an Age of Barbarism This has been, as Eric Hobsbawm put it, ”without doubt the most murderous century of which we have record by the scale, frequency and length of […]

1 Babylon 2 The dragon (Satan) 3 One third 4 Twelve foundation stones and 12 gates representing ”the 12 apostles of the lamb” 5 One thousand years; after which he will be ”loosed a little season” 6 ”The first creature was like a lion, the second like an ox, the third had a human face, […]