Justin Arenstein President Nelson Mandela has ordered the country’s top investigator, Judge Willem Heath, to probe a land deal involving South Africa’s outspoken ambassador to Mozambique and former homeland strongman, Mangisi Zitha. The controversial deal allowed Zitha to buy a 5,7ha farm with two houses in the former KaNgwane homeland in 1991 for just R5 […]
Robert D Hershey Jr If actions speak louder than words, the person many consider the United States’s most astute stock-market investor seems to be whispering “sell”. While Warren E Buffett, the decabillionaire “Oracle of Omaha”, has always argued that market drops provide chances to scoop up bargains, his proposed acquisition of General Re, the US’s […]
Bread Heidi Clark Staff at a school for 250 former juvenile delinquents and street children in the Eastern Cape won a court interdict last week, preventing an attempt by the project’s trust to close it down. The children were facing eviction at the end of September from the institution which has been both their home […]
William Boot Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s intervention this week in Lesotho’s election crisis may prove too little, too late to head off disaster in the beleaguered kingdom. Mbeki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo and Minister of Defence Joe Modise secured agreement from both the governing Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and the country’s major […]
Many of our readers will find the pictures of famine in southern Sudan which we have published deeply distressing. Some may feel that this is a visual invasion of privacy which should not be allowed. Others may wonder whether such appeals to our consciences are not just a short-term palliative: is there not a better […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 5.00pm. UNITED Democratic Movement national secretary Sifiso Nkabinde on Friday expressed “shock” at Thursday’s closure of the Richmond police station, saying it is “strange” that the action was taken only after police officers accused of complicity in the violence demanded proof of the allegations against them. “The UDM finds it […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Friday 11.00pm. MPUMALANGA’S sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, was found guilty of self-enrichment and of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute by the party’s provincial disciplinary committee in Nelspruit on Friday. The three-man committee, headed by provincial finance MEC Jacques Modipane, tried Maropeng in her absence after she kept it […]
Brenda Atkinson The programme preview of South Africa’s first free-to-air commercial television station was a Bondian event, slick with dress suits, French champagne, impeccably understated yet omnipresent waiters, oysters, and a subtle conspiratorial air. e.tv, the Warner Brothers-partnered broadcast competitor that has SABC and M-Net by the balls, last week invited media buyers to a […]
up Howard Barrell Over a Barrel While in exile with the African National Congress in Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s, I had a simple test to decide who I felt comfortable with. It was: can this person appreciate a good anti-ANC joke? If yes, the likelihood was we could work together. If not, co-operation was doubtful. […]
The Mail & Guardian has taken something of a battering at the hands of the legal system over the past couple of weeks. After winding ourselves up for the libel case with the KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General, Tim McNally, we were advised by senior counsel to “tender” for a settlement of R50 000, which McNally took. […]