David Beresford Judge Willem Heath has been compared with everyone from Batman to Judge Dread. With indefatigable energy true to the comic-book tradition, “Hercules Heath” is at it again: staring down Gauteng’s Mathole Motshekga, preparing to haul half a dozen banks – including the Reserve Bank – before the bar of public inquiry, sparking a […]

David Shapshak South African scientists have developed a low-cost, environmentally friendly water- stabilisation system which could revolutionise the way water is treated. The system’s benefits are untold in a country were water is scarce:providing safer drinking water, especially for rural areas, and potentially saving the country a fortune in maintaining the underground water pipes in […]

Securitisation should give the banking industry a kick in the pants and investors a new toy, writes Donna Block Looking for a new home loan? Okay, “round up the usual suspects”. Only a month ago most consumers looking for a home loan would have taken a similar tact. The major banks all have comparable rates, […]

DENMARK has agreed to give Benin 44 billion CFA francs (about $76 million) over five years to alleviate poverty and promote development. As well as helping to increase public participation in development, the money will go to promoting human rights and good governance, Beninese officials on Friday. The donation is the result of talks held […]

THE United Nations Security Council extended for six weeks on Thursday the mandate of a UN mission charged with preparing an independence referendum in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The vote came hours after Morocco signed a technical agreement which provides for the UN forces in the former Spanish colony to be armed in […]

Alex Dodd:LANDMARKS In February 1996 I was woken up in Dublin by the sort of phone call everyone dreads getting. “Take a deep breath. I’ve got some terrible news. Anne is dead.” One of my closest and most inspiring friends had been killed in a head-on collision. Anne’s last words to me had been: “Come […]

Friday night: Michelle Constant Some people do a day at the races, others a night at the opera, mine was an evening at the boxing. Past Hammanskraal, down the freeway, the evening heat lifting off the tired tarmac and the Carousel lights twinkling. Maybe it’s the heat, the almost- desert light at sunset, but it […]

Farmers on South Africa’s northern border are dispossessing their South African workers and trucking in Zimbabweans, who are willing to work for R5 a day. Ann Eveleth reports Maswiri Boerdery director Andries Fourie is the quintessential old-style farmer. Khaki- clad and drunk with the power he exerts over the 400 South African farmworkers he dismissed […]

POLICE arrested four men on Thursday night in connection with the murder of six men who died after being locked in a meat cooler truck in Vereeniging. Gunmen overpowered the six men of the JP Meat enterprise last week and locked them in a cooler truck where they suffocated. The robbers fled with a truck […]

There are grounds for hope that the story with which we are leading this week’s edition of the Mail & Guardian will represent a watershed in relations between the press and the judiciary – showing, as it does, the appreciation of those two institutions as to the primacy of justice, as opposed to merely the […]