THIS has been a year of reconstruction, with damaged and divided urban areas getting the lion’s share of funding to implement projects designed by brilliant architects, planners and engineers — in Berlin, Beirut, Atlanta and Sarajevo, that is. Back home, things look pretty much the same as they did 12 months ago. Nevertheless, some practitioners […]

The Mail & Guardian and its journalists won a string of awards this year. The English Academy of Southern Africa awarded columnist Bafana Khumalo the Thomas Pringle Award for television reviews. The Kaiser Family Foundation named journalist Pat Sidley Health Writer of the Year. Literary editor Shaun de Waal (left) was runner-up in the Leserskring/Leisure […]

Mail &Guardian Reporter KWAZULU-NATAL attorney general Tim McNally has two targets in his sights at the moment: Magnus Malan and other generals acussed of “hit squad” activity; and the Mail & Guardian, accused of defamation. McNally this week served summons on the M&G, claiming R250 000. This arises from articles published in the M&G on […]

1 Which Constitutional Court judge has not served in the court since taking office in 2 Whom did air charter company Foster-Webb sue for R50 000 in November over the non-payment of a two-year-old bill? 3 At which South African university was a lecture interrupted by a student falling through the ceiling? 4 To which […]

Hazel Friedman “ORWELLIAN state interference,” claims Helen Suzman’s new liberal foundation of draft legislation proposing tighter control of South Africa’s NGO-sector — but many of the organisations who would be affected say the red alert is mostly a red herring. Formed to promote liberal democratic values, the Helen Suzman Foundation — due to be launched […]

Two innovative ventures are set to improve the Gauteng public’s art literacy levels, reports HAZEL FRIEDMAN THE perfect instrument for assessing art literacy in Gauteng has, to date, been the microscope. And leading the “no-need-to-know” pack are past city councils whose role in cultural promotion has been so negligible — and misguided — as to […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift IT is to the credit of the new-style South African Rugby Football Union that the process of changing the top playing management has been a fairly smooth affair. And while there has been some chopping and changing, this has been without the blood-letting which has typified such changes both historically and in […]

The Mail & Guardian, like other local newspapers, cannot consider itself to be exempt from public analysis, but it is the critical self-consciousness of the new South African state, writes Colin Paisley BRUCE COHEN certainly knows a lot about the problem of media control in this country. His article (Mail & Guardian, December 1 to […]

Chris McGreal follows a forlorn dirt track to Oloibiri, where oil was first struck in the Niger Delta 40 years ago ASMALL, rectangular sign on the dirt track into Oloibiri is the sole monument to the crucible of modern Nigeria. “This is Oloibiri, the goose that lays the golden egg. You are welcome,” it says. […]

Cinema: Andrew Worsdale MACHISMO meets facetious jokiness in Robert Rodriguez’ Desperado, the disappointing follow-up to his zany and spirited $7 000 art- house hit, El Mariachi. Antonio (baby-fat) Banderas plays the balladeer who travels with a veritable armoury inside his guitar-case as he proceeds to exact revenge on a druglord in a small Mexican border […]