Ann Eveleth : In the Act Civilian victims of the latest series of conflicts afflicting Southern Africa will welcome the news that South Africa’s first- ever Refugees Bill is rapidly traversing the corridors of power. More than three decades after anti-colonial and civil wars first engulfed the region – creating large numbers of refugees – […]

funerals Nomboniso Gasa recalls the days when people turned their rage at apartheid against themselves The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report has captured the worst horrors of the apartheid era. Not all but most. But what we have not really seen are the everyday horrors, the systemic violence of apartheid. In 1985, when I […]

Mail & Guardian reporter The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has thrown out a complaint of subliminal racism laid against the Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times newspapers by the Association of Black Accountants and the Black Lawyers Association. The request for an investigation was turned down “because the issue of racism in the media is […]

Joan Smith : First Person Why don’t women go cruising? When the media is full of the shortage of single men, why is this method of finding partners, briefly at least, unthinkable for women? The simple answer is danger. It is unthinkable for lesbians and straight women alike because we are so accustomed to recognising […]

Residents of De Buldt in the Karoo now have the resources to rebuild their homes, writes Tara Turkington At the end of a long dirt road in the barren Karoo lies a place where residents defied apartheid, and got away with it. Although now almost a ruin, a major award has given it a brighter […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Thursday 4.45pm. SOUTH African centre Andre Snyman says the world champions are being cheated by referees and has slammed the way they are being treated by rugby officials. The 25-times capped centre, in Britain with the rest of the touring South African squad, said: “We feel penalised more than any other […]

Chiara Carter and Marianne Merten A legend who lived a fast life and died a hard death is the inevitable epitaph for slain Cape Town gang leader Jackie Lonte. Lonte – born Neville Heroldt -scripted his life like a B-grade gangster movie and mythologised himself in a city where his gang, the Americans, has resonance […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.50pm. THE Transvaal attorney-general’s office is currently investigating possible tampering with evidence from the plane crash that killed Mozambican president Samora Machel by former security police chief General Krappies Engelbrecht. The investigation could lead to a prosecution. Engelbrecht is one of several apartheid-era generals being scrutinised by the special investigation […]

Fiona Macleod Riccardo Ghiazza, the animal dealer at the centre of the furore about the export of 30 baby elephants from the Tuli bushlands, sold two African elephants to pop idol Michael Jackson in 1993. Jackson is listed by the United States Fisheries and Wildlife as one of the American clients who have bought more […]

John Naughton There is a saying in the computer business that “only the paranoid survive”. The man who has taken it most to heart is Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The pace of change in the computing industry is such that if you blink you might not spot the threat. Gates blinked spectacularly in 1994, when Netscape […]