In the week the TRC released its final report, Penuell Maduna was trying to hide the name of an African politician who enjoyed the National Party’s largesse, writes Mungo Soggot The bizarre saga of how the apartheid government bankrolled the election of a West African president by inflating the South African taxpayers’ crude oil bill […]

The scramble to gag the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report has soured what should have been a crowning moment for South Africa. We had wanted to show the world and ourselves that we could take our violent and dehumanised past, stare it in the face, acknowledge it and move on. Instead, we have […]

Stuart Hess A student at Peninsula Technikon, Max Hamata, has received death threats for writing a story on campus prostitution for the Mail & Guardian. Technikon management has also placed pressure on him to reveal his sources. After the article, “Sex for sale on campus”, appeared on September 18, Hamata was harassed and verbally abused […]

orphans David Gough in Kigali Clarissa Uwizcyimana last saw her son Kofi in December 1996, in the squalid refugee camp in eastern Congo where they had taken shelter two years earlier from the civil war and genocide raging in their native Rwanda. She had gone in search of food when a gunfight broke out between […]

Sharon Hammond The Kruger National Park will present its much-awaited proposal for a new policy on managing its elephant population on Saturday. This follows decades of highly emotional criticism for culling the animals in an effort to keep the population in the park at a fixed number of between 7 000 and 7 500. “We […]

Ann Eveleth: IN THE ACT The public health system must have heaved a sigh of relief when the Cape High Court turned down a challenge to Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma’s Medical Schemes Bill. Cleared of the legal hurdle created by Business South Africa’s attempt to shift the debate into the National Economic Development and […]

Ferial Haffajee `The owner needs the cow because of its milk. The cow needs the owner because he provides it with hay. But when the cow ceases to produce milk, the owner may well decide to slaughter it. The cow cannot do the same to the owner.” This is what Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano said […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Of all the irritating things about SABC TV, I think the one which bothers me the most is its inflexibility – a hangover, like so many aspects of the present service, from the previous policy-makers. SABC3 decided – and please don’t think I’m knocking this decision – that on Saturday […]

Ferial Haffajee Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel will unveil the 1999 state spending plan on November 2, removing the surprise factor from next year’s budget. The event will mark the change from annual to multi-year planning, and is one of the significant post-apartheid changes made by the Department of Finance. Monday’s announcement of a medium-term […]

`Woza Friday, my darling!” went the chorus from a traditional song by migrant workers in the olden days. Emerging from their miserable underground life they only looked forward to two things – traditional food, and rest. With no African eateries on the mines, they prepared their sumptuous African meals themselves. These included umgodu (tripe), samp, […]