The Mail & Guardian is one of the very few newspapers in South Africa showing strong and steady growth. Sales for the country’s leading independent, quality paper in the last six months are up 7,7% over the previous six The release of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures is a time of hyperbole and obfuscation among […]

Openness in government has led to the rise of a new group of parliamentary lobbyists, reports Marion The new South Africa has given birth to a new breed of opportunists. They lurk in the corridors of power with files under their arms, monitor the parliamentary timetable, sit diligently through long committee meetings, and take every […]

Until now a secret, SA’s classification of potential=20 arms-buying countries reveals 30 blacklisted countries,=20 reports Stefaans Brummer NIGERIA, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen … These are some=20 of the 30-odd countries blacklisted by South Africa’s=20 new human rights-leaning classification of arms client=20 countries. The secret list is published by the Mail Guardian today. The classification is […]

An agreement by South Africa to store Iranian=20 crude oil has incensed environmental groups and human=20 rights advocates, reports Rehana Rossouw THE oil trade and oil money are probably the dirtiest=20 in the world, and South Africa was soiling its human=20 rights track record and possibly its environment by=20 agreeing to store Iranian oil, say […]

Clive Simpkins PALLO JORDAN is emphatic about not privatising Telkom, yet the Post Office — its sister megalith in our communications industry — is an example of monopolistic and bureaucratic business at its worst. I wrote recently that the mail service was degenerating into a non-service. It’s actually got worse. I received no mail in […]

The slow pace of change at the Department of Foreign=20 Affairs has prompted Zola Skweyiya to take action,=20 writes Rehana Rossouw MINISTER of Public Service and Administration Dr Zola=20 Skweyiya this week stepped in to overhaul the=20 Department of Foreign Affairs, impatient at the pace of=20 A ministry source said Skweyiya, who met Foreign=20 Affairs […]

CINEMA: Justin Pearce THE Brady Bunch Movie plays in with a tracking shot down a street of shops offering body-piercing, cappucino, cellphones, smokelessness — all those fads which define the Nineties, if we are to believe Nineties lifestyle magazines. And in the midst of the film’s self-conscious check-list of all that is truly Nineties, we […]

Eddie Koch Four lions, that were shot dead and skinned illegally=20 by a pastor of the Full Evangelical Church on a farm=20 near Hoedspruit, are at the centre of a growing row=20 over illicit hunting operations by white farmers in the=20 Northern Province. Conservation officials in Phalaborwa told the Mail Guardian they had the pastor, […]

Simon Segal CNA-GALLO’S dominance of South Africa’s retail book industry will soon be challenged by two new players, one of which is opening the country’s largest book store at the end of October. The CNA-Gallo group, through its 302 CNA outlets and 10 Exclusive Books shops, accounts for some 75 percent of South Africa’s general […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’S Sparrow is imitation Luchino Visconti (perhaps a homage to The Leopard) and ersatz James Ivory, in particular A Room with a View, which it resembles on a number of occasions. Sparrow is undoubtedly expensive and opulent, but ultimately it emerges as no more than a dime-a-dozen Zeffirelli film. Here is […]