Khadija Magardie For many an archive conjures up the image of ageing men, their spectacles covered in a thin film of dust, spending their days hunched over documents in dark attics and basements. Today, however, the field of archive studies has been injected with a new dynamism, particularly in post-apartheid South Africa. The opening-up of […]

Eastern Cape: Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare to merge, with a main base in East London. The merged university to take over the University of Transkei’s (Unitra) medical school; the rest of Unitra to close. University of Port Elizabeth and Port Elizabeth Technikon to merge; so too Border Technikon and Eastern Cape […]

South Africa’s water and sanitation policy fails to stem the tide of infection comment Edward Cottle and Hameda Deedat The death of 260 people and the infection of about 150 000 others in South Africa makes the current cholera epidemic the worst in the history of the country. The prevalence of the water-borne disease, however, […]

Q&A BOBARNO Riaan Wolmarans Bob Arno is a world-travelling pickpocketting artist who steals wallets, lifts watches and even slips the tie off one’s neck without breaking a sweat. He is in South Africa to present his stage show at Carnival City with the help of his wife, Bambi Vincent. Where are you originally from? BA: […]

Pierre du Bois A former human rights commissioner has accused police of harassing people working near Parliament and blocking access to their workplaces during the opening of Parliament last Friday. After a row with office workers, police allegedly planted barricades in front of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) building on Spin Street […]

Thebe Mabanga The South African documentary-making establishment has received a boost from Wits University’s launch last year of its master’s degree in history and documentary film. The degree “fills a gap”, says course coordinator Professor Philip Bonner, head of Wits’s history department. “There is no place on the Reef offering training that combines conceptual, intellectual, […]

Blandly beautiful Riaan Wolmarans After a rather long break Garbage return with beautifulgarbage (David Gresham), their third album. Will it be as popular as their first two? Maybe. It’s all there, the electro-pop with Shirley Manson’s cynical vocals, but it’s just not typical Garbage, with some accusing the band of becoming a pop sell-out. The […]

the Ben Trovato file ‘Mystery Author in Shock Disappearance”. That’s not what I expected to see when I opened the morning paper. It could only have been Ted or Brenda who betrayed me. To get to the package, my increasingly unstable wife would have had to wake before sunrise, slip through the hole in the […]

A successful project has brought water to a relatively poor township community Ngwako Modjadji When Christina Kekana (29) moved from her parents’ home in Tembisa to Ivory Park in 1990 it was a relief for the mother of two to move into her own house. The site allocated to her was a piece of unserviced […]

Mail & Guardian reporter A local NGO, Groundwork, has joined hands with two United States-based counterparts to introduce community-based air pollution monitoring systems in neighbourhoods that are located near industrial sites. For the past three weeks the three organisations have been conducting awareness and air-pollution monitoring campaigns in the piloted areas of Durban South, Sasolburg, […]