In the hope of spoiling your meal or trip home, or of making still less pleasant your absorption of the evening news, here are two thoughts on war which some of us on the Mail & Guardian have recently been discussing. One is about war as Nato tries to wage it; the other is about […]
Eddie Butler Five Nations It remains the ironic charm of rugby. After months of the bitterest infighting possible without anyone resorting to blows – apparently it’s been apoplectically touch and go in several antechambers – a structure has been triumphantly unveiled that will give European rugby a sub- international springboard to international excellence: the English […]
Phillip van Niekerk:FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK On Monday morning I arrived at work and received the following e-mail from Charlene Smith, one of our correspondents: “I was attacked in my home on Thursday night and raped. I am writing about it, not only because I think `victims’ should speak out, but because, except for the […]
Ferial Haffajee A Second Look It is Charlene Smith’s pen that will ensure she is no victim. A rape survivor, her brave and searing account of this most personal and violent violation is a wake-up call. It takes many thousands of words to capture the smell of her fear, the fear of death and the […]
Ivor Powell Advance warning that two professional South African hitmen were inside Zambia and plotting with elements in President Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government to eliminate opposition leader Kenneth Kaunda may have been the factor that saved the former president’s life. According to Kaunda’s son, Major Wezi Kaunda, it was because he […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 91.30am. CONTROVERSIAL playwright Mbongeni Ngema’s estate was sequestrated in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Thursday in the wake the Sarafina II Aids play debacle. The sequestration follows legal action by the Heath Special Investigation Unit in its continued attempts to to recover some R14-million in taxpayers’ money spent on the […]
Jane Rosenthal THE TIKIELINE YUPPIE by Mehlaleng Mosotho (Vivlia) NIGHTS OF IMMORALITY by Colin “Jiggs” Smuts (Vivlia) In their different ways both these books indicate that more than a decade ago change and transformation were alive and well in downtown Johannesburg. Both have dark- skinned protagonists, booze flows freely, women abound (not only as objects […]
KENYAN security forces have closed the border with southern Somalia’s Bulo-Hawo district to stop fighting between factions of the Somali Nation Front from spilling into Kenya, police officials said on Friday. Kenyan security started preventing people from crossing the border from Somalia on Thursday after the killing in Bula-Hawo of SNF faction leader Ali Nur […]
Howard Barrell The African National Congress and the smaller opposition parties expect voter support for the New National Party to collapse in coming weeks as high-profile defections by NNP leaders continue. Some rival party strategists are now suggesting that, on June 2, the NNP may get only a quarter of the votes it achieved in […]
Ferial Haffajee African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma will take the party’s manifesto to Free State’s Mangaung stadium tomorrow alongside Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Bets are on which leader gets the loudest vivas. Two weeks ago, ANC president Thabo Mbeki had to halt a crucial election launch speech as Madikizela-Mandela arrived late at Orlando stadium. An […]