A wealthy European businessman has invested millions in a unique conservation project Fiona Macleod Paul van Vlissengen is one of the richest men in the world, but when he comes out to South Africa where he spends half his time at the moment he lives in a tent. Even for a Hollander, the winter winds […]

For how much longer will government indifference, petty political infighting and bureaucratic incompetence continue to blight millions of South African adults who cannot read or write their own names? And how does one calculate the personal and national costs of the country’s shockingly widespread illiteracy more than a third of adults? Minister of Education Kader […]

Marianne Merten “As we say in Islam, we are brothers and sisters. We must stand together. Don’t look down on someone who is sick, especially not this kind of sick,” says Fatimah January*. She is living with HIV. Her husband discovered his HIV-positive status years ago. Their child is also HIV-positive. “People must get over […]

Congress Mahlangu Agrilink, a project aimed at increasing employment opportunities in agriculture, has raised R11,3-million to assist small farmers in acquiring skills that will enable them to compete with their more established counterparts in the commercial markets. The USAid-funded project was launched in October last year as a pilot in the Eastern Cape. Agrilink provides […]

schoolboy There are fears that a new virulent strain of the disease is circulating in South Africa Mail & Guardian reporter James Hale (16), a scholar at Pretoria Boys High, was packing to return to boarding school on Sunday when he developed a severe headache. His parents took him to Sunward Park Clinic in Boksburg […]

Marianne Merten Citizens appearing in Cape Town’s tax court get more than they bargain for a lecture on civic responsibility and how not submitting tax returns undermines South Africa’s transformation. “This court is not an alien living on the moon, but part of society,” magistrate Nu’maan Long recently lectured an offender. A Cape Town businessman […]

Andries Oliphant speaks to Thebe Mabanga about a blueprint for development of the arts through corporate funding The Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) has done well but has a number of key areas to improve on, believes Andries Oliphant. “We set out to establish a sustainable trust whose funding benefit will be available in perpetuity […]

Jaspreet Kindra “I have never been HIV-positive. I have never had Aids. It was part of a propaganda plot,” says Peter Mokaba, who read reports in some newspapers last year about his death. The former deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism, who was dropped by President Thabo Mbeki from his ministerial berth after the […]

Women flocked to a Johannesburg hotel recently to learn how to solve their bedroom woes Mail & Guardian reporter South African husbands, partners or lovers would probably have loved to be a fly on the wall on the Park Hyatt hotel ballroom in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Tuesday night. The conversation over the foie gras and […]

Mail & Guardian reporter New filmmaker Benning Puren has been awarded funding for two projects by the Arts & Culture Trust. For the project Masjien, Puren has collaborated with designer Jaco van Heerden to create an accessible outlet format for young media artists. The two have dubbed themselves Berlin East (Puren) and Chloorbom (Van Heerden). […]