The Mail & Guardian has achieved a phenomenal growth in readership. Our readership has jumped to a total of 120 000 powerful readers every week. The latest All Media Product Survey (Amps) has found the M&G now enjoys the highest number of readers compared with other niche titles like Business Day and The Sunday Independent. […]

Howard Barrell Serious political disputes in the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology lay behind the resignation this week of its Director General, Roger Jardine. The rows pitted Jardine against one of his two deputies, Musa Xulu, and his minister, Lionel Mtshali, according to arts and science circles, as well as sources in the […]

Swapna Prabhakaran It is common knowledge that South Africa has one of the highest rates of road death in the world. Less well known, however, is that much of the carnage is caused by trucks and could be prevented if heavy freight vehicle regulations were brought into line with world safety standards. South Africa has […]

Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet it’s desert was recently flooded with high-fashion. Adam Levin reports on a fabulous folly Alphadi mounts the podium. His trademark embroidered fez is askew as usual, his pupils alive with excitement. “This,” he announces, wringing his hands passionately, “is pure folly”. All around us, […]

The first Ashes Test begins this Friday. Former England captain Mike Brearley recalls this specific kind of cricket animal Vulture Street, Brisbane: an aptly-named location for the start of an England tour. Wherever one finds it, a hostile sporting crowd embodies the stuff of nightmares. Batting or bowling, the player does his best. And what […]

Wally Mbhele Former Transvaal attorney general Jan d’Oliviera – suspected of tampering with new evidence resulting from a trial he prosecuted – has started a battle to defend his reputation. D’Oliveira was the prosecutor in the trial in which three African National Congress members were convicted of the 1993 Eikenhof killings. The Pan Africanist Congress […]

Jack Schofield Two years after it was launched, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), a connector designed to replace serial and parallel printer ports on personal computers, should start to take off this Christmas. More than 100-million personal computers have been shipped with built-in USB ports, software support has been provided in Windows 98 and Mac […]

Maureen Barnes : Down the tube Two of the most entertaining weekday series recently have been screened on e.tv. Dalziel and Pascoe is on Friday night at 9pm – a night which the other channels treat as thugs night in and over-excite their audiences by screening kung fu or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It’s a classic […]

Africa’s Oscars : Andrew Worsdale Two days before the launch of South African cinema’s biggest schmooze-fest, Sithengi, the film and TV market, most local players were gathered in force with the continent’s counterparts at last Saturday’s M-Net All Africa Film Awards in Pretoria. The State Theatre is a bit monolithic but the seats are so […]

Chiara Carter A visit by President Nelson Mandela this weekend sets the tone for the African National Congress’s Western Cape election campaign which is likely to ignore the thorny issue of race. The party is adopting a different strategy to 1994 when it suffered a bruising defeat at the hands of the National Party in […]