Interactive films may have finally found the plot, writes Jim McClellan There are two words guaranteed to reduce the average games player to a whimpering heap in the corner. Not “game over” but “interactive movie”. Back in the early 1990s, sections of the games industry thought mixing up full- motion video and linear narrative with […]

Donald McNeil reports on one of the greatest ostrich-smuggling scams of all time Timotheus Voges says he has gone straight these days, but there was a time when he was the most devious ostrich smuggler in Africa. He’s just another businessman now – like any other who owns 8 000 birds that dress like model […]

Mail & Guardian reporter This week Telkom went to court to try to win control over the provision of infrastructure for the Internet, a move that could put some Internet service providers out of business. Telkom currently rents bandwidth to service providers, who – in terms of Telkom’s claimed monopoly of Internet service provision – […]

Angella Johnson They faced each other like gladiators in the truth commission arena; two battle- scarred adversaries in a fight to decide if the killers of Communist Party leader Chris Hani should be granted amnesty and walk free. The verbal sparring between civil rights advocate George Bizos and the formidable racist grand dame Gaye Derby-Lewis […]

The septuplets born in November brought joy to Iowa, but doctors in Britain are not pleased by the news. Why? Because of fertility drugs, report Chris Mihill and Sarah Boseley The seven little McCaugheys would not have known, but they were making good-news headlines across the world last month: the second-known set of septuplets ever […]

Ferial Haffajee : Design of the week Kudos this week to the Beyond Awareness Campaign for taking an international symbol and making it local. A community development project called Ilala Weavers in Empangeni, KwaZulu-Natal, has taken the international symbol of the fight against Aids – the red ribbon – and recast it as a Zulu […]

Angella Johnson Senior black managers in the South African Police Service (SAPS) warned this week that they are no longer prepared to accept widespread and endemic racism from white colleagues, and would strike if necessary to force the police to stamp out racism. Officers from national and provincial police structures met on November 2 to […]

Lizeka Mda If there were still “Whites Only” signs in South Africa, most people would be outraged. Yet practically the whole physical environment in the country says “Able-bodied only” as it deliberately shuts out a fair percentage of the population. Disabled South Africans are denied a full life because they have minimal access to education, […]

Gustav Thiel Mojalefa Murphy, one of South Africa’s most senior black nuclear physicists, has won the first round in a dispute with the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC). This week, the Pretoria High Court ruled that Murphy was entitled to have an independent mediator preside over a disciplinary hearing the AEC is holding against him. The […]

The TRC Special Report is slim on resources but big on ideas, writes Gustav Thiel The team responsible for television’s award-winning TRC Special Report is watching the latest edition of their programme at the Brixton, Johannesburg home of one of the producers. Situated just under the SABC’s huge transmission tower, the room is quiet as […]