MONDAY, 4.00PM: IN an unexpected turn in the Lusaka High Court on Monday, the state dropped all charges against former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, after which Judge Japhta Banda declared Kaunda a free man. “It’s great, it’s great,” declared Zambia’s 74-year-old founding father as hundreds of his supporters broke through a police cordon to celebrate […]
`Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the inscription on the Statue of Liberty urges the world. In South Africa, which we pride as a “land of liberty”, we electrocute them, detain them, deport them and, on occasion, lynch them. Even when they are not poor and huddled we […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Next time Spiwe Takura stands in front of police officers for her training session, she will have the perfect example of victimisation to present. A human rights trainer for the police in Gauteng, Takura claims her own human rights were shockingly abused in Yeoville. Her ordeal started at a supermarket last month when […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter Radio’s Oscars, the annual Sony awards, shone on South Africa at this year’s glam function at Grosvenor House in London’s Park Lane. A documentary presented by Mail & Guardian correspondent Eddie Koch and produced by Johannesburg-based educational broadcasters Ulwazi won a bronze. The Last Voice – the compelling story of Kalahari […]
Suzy Bell On stage in Durban Five years ago a young lad called John was living in London. He woke up one freezing winter’s morning and decided to come home and promised himself that if he was not touring his country as a stand-up comedian by the age of 25, he’d become a panel beater […]
Uneven standards of community care mean the state’s new policy of releasing mental patients could be a bad plan, writes Andy Duffy The deaths of seven people at the hands of former state psychiatric patients in the Western Cape have exposed a raw nerve in state health circles. The Department of Health this week slammed […]
sabotaged,’ says JSE Mungo Soggot The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has scotched claims by the directors of Amalia Gold Mining that the company, which is being liquidated after its spectacular collapse, was sabotaged in a hostile take- over bid. The JSE suspended Amalia Gold Mining on March 5 after the share lost 95% of its […]
Nick Cumming-Bruce President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie’s enthusiasm is infectious, but his head- spinning monologues have the power to wear anyone down – as Margaret Thatcher discovered while drumming up business in Indonesia. Purposeful as ever on a mid-1980s visit, she strode around the Bandung aviation plant with Habibie trotting beside her, talking furiously. Visibly flagging, […]
Charlene Smith On March 16 1984, former president PW Botha met his Mozambican counterpart, Samora Machel, at the Nkomati River to sign an accord that effectively blackmailed Mozambique. Next month, on June 6, President Nelson Mandela and Machel’s succesor, President Jaoquim Chissano, will open the Maputo development corridor, strengthening relations between the two countries and […]
Will Tyler Of all Apple Computer’s troubles in recent years, the problem that has proved most difficult to solve is how to replace its ageing flagship, the Macintosh operating system (OS). Two previous attempts have failed. Earlier this month, at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder and interim CEO, revealed […]