RobertKirby : Loosecannon I would like to express my gratitude to Kader Asmal for his good-natured response (“Kirby should look before he leaps”, September 11 to 17) to a column of mine in which I suggested he needed a wake-up call on the matter of the Dukuduku forest – or what is left of the […]

Andrew Muchineripi : Soccer For sheer suspense, the ongoing saga over who will succeed Monsieur Philippe Troussier as coach of the national team is beginning to rival an Agatha Christie thriller. Dutchman Ruud Gullit was coming to Africa to transform Bafana Bafana into giants, only to be permanently distracted by the small matter of a […]

Ferial Haffajee A Pretoria branch of the Democratic Party is known as the armed wing of the party – or Umkhonto weDP – because its members have so much firepower. Among the diverse membership of the Centurion branch are former generals, colonels navy officers of the old South African Defence Force and 12 members of […]

After hundreds of years of research, the molecular spark that triggered life still puzzles scientists, writes Paul Davies In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster is brought to life by a bolt of electricity. This procedure fitted in with the 19th-century view that living matter is somehow distinct from non-living matter, and that an organism […]

Mail &Guardian reporter Spatial Development Initiatives (SDI’s) have created 518 investment opportunities valued at R115,4 billion – with the potential to create 118 000 new jobs – across South Africa. By June this year, 144 of these projects, with an investment value of around R31- billion and the potential to create more than 32 000 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 11.45am. SUNDOWNS were stunned on Saturday when they went down 2-1 to Bloemfontein Celtic in a shock Premier Soccer League defeat at the Free State Stadium. Sundowns missed many opportunities that could have seen then take the match, but Celtic opened the scoring in the 25th minute through Stoffel Nikane […]

He’s known for his long, soft notes, but it’s the wild brushstrokes of Miles Davis that are about to get Jo’burg talking. Matthew Krouse and Alex Dodd check it out When Miles Davis was hit by a stroke in the late Seventies, his hand went into paralysis and he was terrified that he would never […]

Andrew Worsdale The French, arguably, invented cinema, although there is some contention that Thomas Edison was the founder. Either way, thanks to brothers Auguste andLouis Lumire, cinema became part of daily life with screenings at Paris’s Grand Caf in 1895. Frenchman George Mlis, probably the first cinema artist, developed special effects to create a pantomime […]

More disillusioned MPs are expected to defect to the Democratic Party, writes Howard Barrell As the Democratic Party increasingly assumes the mantle of unofficial leader of the opposition in Parliament from the ailing National Party, a number of MPs from other opposition parties are expected to jump ship in coming weeks. Only the timing of […]

Julienne du Toit There are few things that strike fear into the heart of an environmentalist faster than high-speed industrialisation in remote, beautiful areas. Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs) have been planned on and near some of the finest beauty spots. So the response of many environmentalists and environmental organisations has ranged between outrage and mistrust, […]