Wally Mbhele The commissioner of prisons, Khulekani Sithole, is apparently running a private soccer team out of his department, using its resources to finance the team. The first division team, called Spartak, allegedly uses Pretoria Central prison as a home ground, and its coach and some of its players are on the payroll of the […]

Fine Art: Tracey Murinik Willie Bester, Louis Jansen van Vuuren and Zwelethu Mthethwa form a rather unexpected and somewhat unlikely trio at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town this month. They have come together not only to exhibit their own respective works but also to collaborate on a number of pieces which […]

Blessed with prodigious acting gifts, and an Oscar to prove it, and cursed with a terrible liking for drink – now long overcome – he is one of the great British stars. Gaby Wood on a Welshman who conquered his weaknesses and the world Anthony Hopkins says he’s having the best time of his life […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Without wishing to rub salt into e.tv’s wounds, I noticed that all the recent press schedules for the troubled service show a daily half hour news bulletin at 7pm which hasn’t yet materialised. In its place was a British sitcom, the name of which I don’t know, followed by a […]

dream in tatters Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH There are few countries whose near- destruction, through civil war, has pained me as much as that of Guinea- Bissau. This country fired my imagination in the early 1970s, for although its population was less than a million, it became – together with its sister, the […]

The David Gleason Column This is the last column I shall write this year – and I have to say I’m rather glad 1998 has come to a writing end. It has been a brutal year for me personally, but also for many thousands of South Africans who have been trampled upon, caught by the […]

David Shapshak A flamethrower system fitted to cars to ward off hijackers has attracted huge international attention. In the same week South Africa hit the headlines with the discovery of a 3,5- million-year-old skeleton, a local entrepreneur was attracting nearly as much attention for an entirely different reason. Charl Fourie’s flamethrower will launch a fireball […]

Preview of the week: Matthew Krouse Ennio Marchetto, the living cartoon strip, doesn’t need to press buttons in order to transform himself into the 50 famous characters in his show. Present-day computer animators may perform God-like acts in television studios that double up as laboratories for human cloning, but this Venetian mime achieves the impossible […]

Howard Barrell: OVER A BARREL What’s in a word? Probably not a great deal more than the user puts into it. The idea of rigid definitions is discredited, and the way in which a word is commonly used is little more than a rough guide to its meaning. So it is often not easy to […]

Wally Mbhele has been appointed assistant editor at the Mail & Guardian. Mbhele (35), who hails from Bethlehem in the Free State, has been a political correspondent at the M&G since August last year. Trained at The Weekly Mail, he has worked on a number of publications including Vrye Weekblad, New Nation and City Press […]