As the bombs rain down on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance finds itself in a tricky position. Stefaans Brmmer reports from Khwaja-Bahawudin in northern Afghanistan A boyish soldier named Satar cradles a Russian machine gun at his post in a dusty hilltop trench, then fires a short burst towards a hill in the distance where similar […]

Performances at this year’s festival ranged from good to middling to downright bad Riaan Wolmarans It was very white, it was very Afrikaans and there were more food stalls than there were shows. The Aardklop National Arts Festival took place last weekend in Potchefstroom and while it attracted a massive crowd, with about 83000 tickets […]

ATHLETICS Martin Gillingham South Africa’s top athletics official has issued a blunt ultimatum to the government, claiming: “If you want us to bring back medals from major championships then you have to show us the money.” Athletics South Africa (ASA) came under heavy fire following our athletes’ performances at the world championships in August where […]

At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the developed and developing worlds had vastly different agendas. Developed vs developing: Pollution vs land degradation Acid rain/ozone depletion vs loss of biomass Water quality vs water quantity/access Over-production of crops vs monoculture crops Landscape destruction (road-building) vs landscape destruction (mining) Climate change vs desertification Population stagnation vs […]

The party has launched a two-pronged strategy to win voters in 2004 Marianne Merten An African National Congress pamphlet blitz across the Cape Peninsula makes a significantly different pitch in English and Afrikaans to Cape Town’s white suburbs and the working class communities of the Cape Flats. Tens of thousands of flyers titled From Divided […]

CRICKET Peter Robinson One man has emerged as the gravest threat imaginable to South Africa’s avowed ambition of becoming the best cricket team in the world. It isn’t Steve Waugh and it isn’t Shane Warne. Nor even is it, as many South Africans might suppose, umpire Darrell Hair. No, the worm in the apple is […]

The average councillor’s wage has risen 130% from R36769 to R84573 a year under the new municipal system, the treasury’s intergovernmental fiscal review shows. This is despite a 30% reduction in the number of councillors in terms of the new municipal demarcation, from 11 368 to 8 939. The review says councillors’ pay had risen […]

analysis Glenda Daniels The state could make a hefty R175-billion from privatising just three of its top, state-owned enterprises – Eskom, Telkom and Transnet – according to BusinessMap, which this week released Restructuring 2001: In Progress, a report on the process. The three parastatals represent 77% of all state enterprises. But privatisation is at a […]

Mail & Guardian reporters This week’s spate of revenge attacks against Afghanistan by the United States and its allies have fuelled talk of a “holy war” between Muslims and the “infidel West”. This has exposed the fault lines within the local Muslim community with believers torn between respecting the laws of South Africa which expressly […]

Glenda Daniels Not a cent of the government’s R1-billion Umsombomvu Fund has been used for job creation in the two years since it was set up, and the fund is to be shifted from the Department of Finance to the Department of Labour “because of lack of capacity”. Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel announced in […]