Andy Colquhoun in Parramatta RUGBY Reporting on the Springboks occasionally puts one in mind of what it may have been like tramping in the wake of Caesar’s army as it marched into Germania each summer to campaign against the Visigoths (the author and proprietors of the Mail & Guardian in no way vouch for the […]
Khadija Magardie BEYOND RIGHTS TALK AND CULTURE TALK: COMPARATIVE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS AND CULTURE edited by Mahmood Mamdani (David Philip) The politics of rights and culture revolves around a specific question – can a culture of individual rights coexist with the right of every individual to practice one’s culture? The essays in […]
slopes Monica Graaff Obituary To those who don’t climb – and I am one of them – the question “why” always comes up. Why risk your life unnecessarily? Why choose the most difficult route up a mountain when you could stroll up the back? Why? To Duncan Elliott, the 35-year-old South African alpinist who died […]
Paul Kirk Transvestites are almost always men and very often hetero- sexual. They enjoy dressing as women either some of the time or permanently. They may dress up in full female regalia in public or in private. They might also be quite satisfied by wearing a single item of female underwear beneath normal male clothing. […]
NicK Mallett has reshuffled a Springbok pack – but it still contains few aces Andy Capostagno It has been a tough week for Nick Mallett, the coach who could do without Mark Andrews and AJ Venter, but who thought that Percy Montgomery was indispensable. The crumbs on the floor are the last remnants of a […]
Nelson Mandela, who is mediating the Burundi peace process, failed to secure an agreement last week, but now says a deal will be signed on August 28.
David Beresford Another Country A former American foreign correspondent turned dot-com finance consultant tossed a thought to me over dinner the other day. He asked rhetorically what would have happened if PW Botha and his boys had tried to impose censorship on South Africa today as they did in the mid- 1980s? The question is […]
Desmond Tutu often caused bemusement when he said that apartheid oppressed us all – black, white and all the shades in-between – and that its end would free us all. The bewilderment that sometimes greeted his assertion was not difficult to understand. For, whatever curtailment apartheid imposed on whites’ liberty or life chances, it seemed […]
Those who are least keen on our new democracy, it seems, make most use of it. Take the current mobilisation against the Property Rates Bill, which offers further evidence that neat theories often fail to explain political life here. Logic suggests that majority rule should relegate whites to the outer margins of public debate. Race […]
Nechama Brodie A Toyota manager has been dismissed for allegedly e-mailing a caricature of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to his colleagues. The cartoon, which features Mugabe’s face pasted on to the body of a gorilla, with the words, “We want the farms to grow more bananas,” was thought to contribute to racial tensions in the […]