TUESDAY, 5.30PM: APARTHEID dirty tricks agent Ferdi Barnard’s advocate closed Barnard’s case in the Pretoria High Court on Monday, admitting that he was unable to find even one witness who was prepared to testify for Barnard. Advocate Faan Coetzee told the court that several witnesses were hesitant to testify as they would be implicated in […]
TUESDAY, 1.30PM: A REMARKABLE number of staff of the Safety and Security Ministry — including Minister Sydney Mufamadi, his driver, his private secretary, and the private secretary of his deputy minister — have all been involved in accidents while driving state-owned cars, the ministry revealed on Monday. “Good grief,” was the response of usually outspoken […]
John Pilger cannot be accused of understating his case, either in his film or this article. Which is fine, but then he musn’t expect others to endorse his polemical views and interpretations. Hence the disclaimer. He says the old SABC sometimes ran critical documentaries by foreign TV journalists and accompanied them with disclaimers like the […]
Ferial Haffajee South Africa’s trade mission to Angola jetted into Luanda this week with a mandate to fix what apartheid strong-arm tactics destroyed. Pundits say it will cost Southern Africa more than R50-billion to rebuild the rail and road links the previous government helped to destroy. This week President Nelson Mandela and his trade gurus […]
Ian Wylie and Liz Stuart Plastic may be the gold standard for a new millennium, but people are proving reluctant to give up notes and coins. Cash is still king and electronic purse pretenders are finding it tougher than expected to win allegiance. When coins tear holes in pockets, notes disintegrate and both make the […]
US Martin Kettle Organisers of marathons and long-distance road races in the United States are barring or limiting entrants from Kenya – the most frequent winners – and offering higher prizes to American competitors. The move is overtly anti-African and, in many eyes, racist. The prestigious Bolder Boulder race in Colorado has just restricted Kenyan […]
Charl Blignaut : Music awards It was pretty evident, on entering the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg on Saturday night, that the 1998 FNB South African Music Awards (Samas) were not going to be the Grammys. The red carpet was peeling up from the steps, liberating several strips of thick white masking tape keeping it in […]
Tim Radford Stone Age people built the first astronomical observatory centuries before anyone had thought they did. Scientists working in the Sahara have identified a series of megaliths that predate Stonehenge in Britain and other sites by more than 1 000 years. Around 6 500 years ago, an unknown people living in Nabta, southern Egypt, […]
Peter Frost : On stage in Cape Town The love between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has inspired many a romantic fancy on stage, none slushier than the recent West End musical Always, a sunset-and-syrup escapade – as nauseating as it was, according to British playwright Snoo Wilson, untrue. Wilson’s new drama HRH, by contrast, […]
A growing number of readers have been demanding to know from the Mail & Guardian when Robert McBride is going to be released from the Mozambique prison where he is being held. Well might they ask. And it is not the only question which needs to be asked of the authorities where the McBride case […]