Q&A: Peet pienaar Guy Willoughby Multifaceted artist Peet Pienaar was one of the prime movers behind the edgy, boundary-blurring Nescaf Post Festival of Art, Theatre, Video and Music at the revamped Bijou Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town, last week. One of your chief aims was to cross art and media divides. Did this happen? Absolutely. […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter Five NGOs walked away with R50 000 each in Ashoka’s Citizen Base Initiative Awards earlier this week. The winners were the Joubert Park Neighbourhood Development Association, the Western Cape Blind Association, Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa, The Kids Care Project Trust and Agape Copeland Train. The competition is held in […]

Why is the world’s media so inconsistent when reporting on the military occupation in Palestine? When 26 Israelis were killed in bombings this weekend it created a crisis that mobilised the world and saturated the media, while the targeting and killing of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians, a third of them children, and the suffocation […]

Glenda Daniels Zimbabwe can be saved from economic collapse only if its President, Robert Mugabe, is removed from power at the next election, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Zwelinzima Vavi said this week. Speaking after a three-day meeting of the Southern Africa Trade Union Co-ordination Council (Satucc) in Johannesburg, […]

Jaspreet Kindra The four men at the centre of the alleged “plot” to overthrow President Thabo Mbeki were not questioned at any stage of the South African Police Service (SAPS) investigation, it emerged this week. This strengthens suspicions that the allegations were never taken seriously, but were rather a political move to head off perceived […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter The most consistently entertaining boxer currently active in South Africa is World Boxing Union (WBU) cruiserweight champion Sebastian “the Soldier” Rothmann. He’s not the greatest pugilist in the business, but he always comes to fight. Rothmann makes the fourth defence of his title on Saturday in England against veteran Crawford Ashley. Ashley, […]

The trial of a former police commander threatens to expose rifts within the force Zenzile Khoisan President Thabo Mbeki was briefed four years ago on alleged business partnerships between Angolan President Jos Eduardo dos Santos, some Dos Santos cronies, and Cape-based mafioso Vito Palazzolo. The Mail & Guardian is in possession of a 1997 briefing […]

MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday AMID condolences and warm tributes to murdered former first lady Marike de Klerk – initially thought to have committed suicide after years of depression following her divorce and singledom – her dark side has been largely forgotten. Apparently a reluctant politician’s wife, she had tried to persuade her former […]

John Young “The days of going into games maybe 10 years ago without a game-plan are gone,” Shaun Pollock told SA Sports Illustrated in September. The curriculum of the national academy obviously does not include South Africa’s 1952/53 tour of Australia. If it did, Pollock would know that one of the biggest cricketing upsets of […]

Mungo Soggot The assets and accounts of the South African Diamond Board were frozen on Thursday after the board violated a court order obliging it to pay one of its main contractors. The company accusing the board of not paying up is Diamond Valuation International Company (DVIC), the government diamond valuator. It has been in […]