Peace and goodwill to all – it is the message of Christmas that inspires people of every religion. But there has been fighting this month in Bethlehem on the West Bank, the cradle of Christianity. Mail & Guardian correspondents fanned out from Namibia to Jamaica, from Wales to the Free State, to discover the spirit […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 4.30pm. SLIGHT gains on most JSE indices were offset by massive losses on the all gold composite, while the rand and bonds were steady or up on Wednesday. The day was marked by light trading and overshadowed by International Monetary Fund’s declining fears of global recession. The international lender indicated […]

shepherds than the other Bethlehem’ Jon Ronson Gwylym Richards says that, in some ways, Bethlehem, Wales, is better than Bethlehem, the West Bank. “We’re a lovely place to pray and meditate,” he says. “The other Bethlehem is all about hustle and bustle, but we’re all about peace and quiet. Also, we’ve got more sheep and […]

At the age of 102, Sholipi Mbutu has outlived all but one of her children, writes Swapna Prabhakaran Not many people remember Sholipi Mbutu’s name. At 102, she’s been an old woman for so long, everyone calls her Gogo. Mbutu lives with her daughter in a tiny house 40km from the coastal town of Kwambonambi, […]

censorship were over? Brenda Atkinson As the second Johannesburg Biennale limped into the early weeks of 1998, it seemed for a while that post- international-schmoozing stress disorder might have taken the tart out of art. Fatigued by working, networking, or just plain complaining, contemporary artists countrywide curled into introspection for the first half of the […]

Belinda Beresford Assuming the near-mythical millennium bug doesn’t wipe out your bank account or erase all traces of you in your pension fund, handling money in the year 2000 will have moved on more than a little from the start of this century. Cheques, notes and even coins are going the way of the gold […]

Criminals are using the instability in some countries to build crime networks inside the state, write Stephen Ellis and Batrice Hibou What do Russia, India, Italy, Nigeria, Turkey and Colombia have in common, apart from the fact that they are all sovereign states with seats at the United Nations? All of them have allowed professional […]

Finding a cure for Aids may take years, but the medical fraternity is attempting to stop the spread of the disease, writes Stuart Hess While the world looks forward to a future in which infertile couples can have children via genetic cloning, and people with missing limbs can be given fully functional robotic hands, arms […]

A is for Artistic Atrocities against Humanity. Foremost on this year’s list must be the SABC-commissioned production Avenues that had such an unfathomable plot and such putrid camera work that, after much public outrage, it was shifted from its prime time slot on Mondays at 9pm to late on a Sunday night. B is for […]

Ferial Haffajee If Anna Stoffberg lives for another year, she will earn the rare distinction of seeing in the start of two centuries. “I am a hundred-and- something,” says the wizened woman from her bed in a tiny council flat in Eldorado Park, a former coloured township near Johannesburg. The flat is home to 10 […]