early John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF I know it is almost February, and the year is ticking by, but I have just woken up to the fact that it really is 1999. That the Y2K madness has officially been allowed to take over as a substitute for logic in our times, that Nelson Mandela is […]

Mungo Soggot:A SECOND LOOK In a letter to the Mail & Guardian last week, Willie Hofmeyr, African National Congress MP responded to an editorial, entitled “Ban guns, build jails, fire Sydney”, which discussed the lamentable state of law and order in South Africa. Hofmeyr hit back by cataloguing the creation of “drastic anti-crime laws”, the […]

THE Democratic Party scooped the municipal by-election at the former National Party stronghold of Kraaifontein in the Western Cape on Thursday. DP candidate Fanie Jacobs stormed in 531 votes ahead of independent candidate Deon Basson with 364. The New National Party candidate Wilfred Hambly came in a distant third with 250 votes.

William Leith A MONK SWIMMING by Malachy McCourt (HarperCollins) In Angela’s Ashes, the bestselling autobiography by Frank McCourt, Frank’s younger brother Malachy appears first as a grimy urchin, and then as an older version of one. In A Monk Swimming, the younger brother’s memoir, Frank flits through the action in a correspondingly sensible, buttoned-up fashion. […]

force Belinda Beresford The furore surrounding a Hartebeespoort landowner who gave some of his land away has spurred on the local council, farmers and developers to undertake to provide 1 000 black families in the area with their own houses by the new millennium. Already 14 developers have promised to donate land for housing – […]

bloodshed Chris McGreal The KwaZulu-Natal town of Richmond is bracing itself for another bout of bloodshed this weekend with the funerals of assassinated United Democratic Movement secretary general and warlord Sifiso Nkabinde and those killed in a revenge attack on an African National Congress family attending a funeral vigil. Nkabinde’s right-hand man and probable successor […]

Widow Product:BLACK WIDOW V3.63 by SoftByte Lab If you’ve gone through the tedious process of trying to save an entire website on to your hard drive file by file, you probably got the jitters thinking about your telephone bill. And if you discovered afterwards that suddenly all those images you painstakingly saved cannot be viewed […]

This week’s Mail & Guardian comes with a new set of features designed to make Africa’s best read even better. l Writer, movie director and semi- retired actor John Matshikiza kicks off a new column, With the Lid Off. Those with long memories will remember this was the title of the regular column his father, […]

Chiara Carter The Democratic Party is anticipating further defections by New National Party politicians following its stunning defeat of the NNP in an area which for decades was a stronghold of the former National Party. The Kraaifontein municipal by-election on Wednesday saw DP candidate Fanie Jacobs win 531 votes, as opposed to 364 votes cast […]

As the West Indies wind up their humiliating cricket tour of South Africa, they have very little hope of regaining their lost grandeur of the Eighties, argues Cameron Duodo No one will feel as devastated by the 5-0 whitewash of the West Indies by South Africa more than Windies captain Brian Lara. Lara ran into […]