Fela The late Fela Kuti, activist and Afrobeat king, helped Nigeria find its voice. His saxophonist son is a political force, too – but an icon is a hard act to follow, writes Rachel Newsome When Femi Kuti arrived at the hospital, it was so early that the 4am Lagos sprawl seemed as still as […]
It is not an enviable position Superintendent Pieter Lategan, commander of the South African Police Service’s endangered species protection unit (ESPU), finds himself in (“`Cream Poachers’ are greatest threat to Africa’s wildlife”, Monitor, April 1 to 8). Lategan’s struggling unit was thrown a $460 000 lifeline by an ostensibly harmless supporter. This came about in […]
Nick Paul is in stitches as the NSA gallery becomes a catwalk for a unique collaboration between art and fashion Just when you think it’s time to entertain the possibility that we’ve run out of new ideas, along comes somebody and invents a backpack with only one strap. Ex fashion semper aliquid novi. Actually, those […]
Ann Eveleth Four years ago President Nelson Mandela jetted into Weenen – the “place of weeping” – to preach the gospel of government land reform to an audience of landless farmworkers, insecure labour tenants and recalcitrant white farmers. Launching KwaZulu-Natal’s R35-million pilot land reform programme in 1995, Mandela promised to reverse land apartheid and bridge […]
Adam Mars-Jones SINGLE & SINGLE by John le Carr (Hodder &Stoughton) There have been a dozen books since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and still John le Carr seems like a butterfly escaped from the chrysalis of the genre novel but afraid to spread his wings, more than half regretting the old […]
A RIGHTWINGER, who earlier this year received amnesty for 32 acts of terror, on Friday threatened to resume bombings in solidarity with Chris Hani’s assassins who were denied amnesty earlier this week for the SA Communist Party leader’s murder. Dries Kriel, secretary-general of the Boereweerstandsbeweging, in a statement on Friday said he wanted the Truth […]
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 […]
AN Egyptian and a Tanzanian suspected of taking part in the deadly bombing of the United States embassy in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam last year are due to appear before a resident magistrate again on Friday. This development in the drawn-out case follows the release by the United States FBI of a long-awaited […]
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 […]