LIBYAN leader Moammar Gadaffi has called for a meeting of African leaders to deal with “plots” against the continent, the official Jana news agency said in Tripoli on Thursday. Gadaffi made the proposal in telephone calls to African heads of state, including President Nelson Mandela, and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore, acting president of the Organisation […]

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 […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby I can’t imagine why such a fuss is being made about the appointment of Mr Ramesh Vassen as consul general to India. Anyone with two eyes in his head could see it coming a mile off. The appointment of one’s political buddies into high office has always been within the purview […]

ZIMBABWEAN writer Yvonne Vera, author of Under the Tongue, which won the Commonwealth prize in 1997 (Africa Region), has been awarded Sweden’s The Voice of Africa literary award for 1999. Vera (34) will be presented with the award at a function at the Gothenburg Book Fair. 11

At the scene of their initial showing on the exhibition Smokkel, on the fringe of the second Johannesburg Biennale in 1997, Lisa Brice’s ogling beanbags sat, slouched and a little ridiculous, passively watching the slowly changing facial progressions of a forensic identikit computer programme on the television screen before them. Brice described the piece, entitled […]

Amanda Fitschen The recent announcement by KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Finance Peter Miller that his province had managed to turn its financial situation around to register a surplus for the current financial year, compared to a deficit for the previous year, must have startled even the least cynical individual. Some may even have asked why all […]

Artist Barend de Wet has opened a hotel in Cape Town. But there’s still room for art, writes Chris Roper People are used to artist Barend de Wet’s strange takes on art. A while ago, walking through Greenmarket Square, I spotted a display window with two eyeholes cut into its covering. Staring in, I was […]

SUDANESE civilians may be tried by military courts for crimes involving firearms, explosives, espionage, and military secrets, a source cited by the official Suna news agency said in Khartoum on Thursday. “If the army commander-in-chief and state prosecutor agree, civilians suspected of these crimes may be judged by the armed forces tribunal, responsible for the […]

UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni has ordered his controversial brother, Major General Salim Saleh, to repay a loan he owes the troubled Uganda Commercial Bank, the independent Monitor newspaper reported on Thursday.”He [Museveni] sent me a message through someone that I should pay the UCB loan [of $1,7-million] so that I can clear this mess,” Saleh […]

JUSTIN Hobday set a new course record by shooting a 61 (-11) in the first round of the South African Masters on Thursday at the Oppenheimer Park Golf Course in Welkom, Free State.