Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD `Hey, Angella. Your homies are being slaughtered,” chirped the Mail & Guardian’s sports editor as the West Indies cricket team crashed spectacularly in the fifth Test. I detected a generous delivery of schadenfreude in his comment. He was not the only South African in recent weeks to have joyfully […]

Chiara Carter Two of the New National Party’s most senior Western Cape leaders, Patrick McKenzie and Peter Marais, are preparing to jump ship or challenge the moribund leadership of their disintegrating party. The African National Congress will this weekend discuss accommodating McKenzie, the veteran Cape Flats politician and former welfare deputy minister, into its ranks. […]

Hilary Freeman Come over here a second. If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to tell anyone? Good. We’d better keep our voices down because you’ll never believe what I’m about to tell you … Gossip makes the world go round – and keeps your office ticking over. I know it’s true […]

David Beresford: A SECOND LOOK There is something gloriously tragic about the story of the Afrikaners’ search for a national identity and a home to call their own: the flight from the Cape, the jubilant discovery of the Nile (wrong stream, but what the heck) and their arrival in their garden of Eden, only to […]

Checking your credit record regularly can save you money. Belinda Beresford explains how They know your name and where to find you. They know where you shop, how much you’ve spent and how high your cellphone bill is. They are the credit bureaux: collectors and vendors of information, about you, me, the person next door […]

Dan Atkinson in London An infamous headline in a business newspaper is said to have reported the 1938 Munich Agreement thus: “Shares fall on peace fears,” and then there was the character in the film Reds who, asked what World War Iwas about, replied: “Profits.” The events of recent weeks prompt thoughts about the effects […]

the ball game The US media is obsessed with impeachment. But the people believe life has rarely been so sweet, says Ed Vulliamy During the week that the first impeachment trial of a United States president this century began in earnest, another record bit the dust. This one concerned the proverbial diamond-in-the-dust, as it happens: […]

CDs of the week: Sam Taylor Bruce Springsteen is the second-most bootlegged artist in rock, after Bob Dylan, and Tracks (Columbia), a four- CD, 66-track compilation of unreleased material has been long anticipated. Inevitably, it is not wholly satisfying. There are too many unremarkable outtakes from his weakest albums, Born in the USA and Human […]

The police version of the Boipatong massacre is beginning to unravel, write Mail & Guardian reporters Former Vaal policeman Sergeant Gerhardus “Pedro” Peens has admitted that he was in the Vaal Triangle township of Boipatong on the fateful night of June 17 1992 when 46 people – including women, children and a four- month-old baby […]

Chiara Carter Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico is convinced the African National Congress is positioned to wrest coloured votes from the New National Party and win the province outright in the coming elections. The province’s election race is likely to be closely watched because it is one of few where the government could change hands […]