John Saul, veteran Canadian anti- apartheid activist and widely published author on Southern African affairs, reflects on his recent stay in South Africa After a term teaching sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, my strongest impression of the new South Africa is just how easy, in many circles, it has become to be considered […]

Parks Mankahlana CROSSFIRE The Mail & Guardian carried an assessment on the first year of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency by Professor Sipho Seepe in which he shows total disregard for facts, logic, history and the obligation among scientists, natural or social, to add empirical value to national discourse. In his assessment of the presidency, Seepe alleges […]

Nicholas Lezard BODY LANGUAGE Jared Diamond asks an interesting question in the title of his recent book Why Is Sex Fun? To which the first answer could be: is it? I remember one bookshop which put The Joy of Sex in its fiction section. This is not just a joke. It illustrates that there are […]

A report released recently shows that Johannesburg women have accepted sexual abuse as the norm Brenda Atkinson Young women in greater Johannesburg’s Southern Metropolitan Local Council (SMLC) have internalised their daily risk of sexual assault to the extent that most do not even consider forced sex to fall within the definition of sexual violence. This […]

Barry Streek The Royal Dutch/Shell group has allocated R4,5-million to two South African educational programmes concerning energy use over the next three years. This is part of the new Shell Foundation, which has received initial funding of more than R200-million for social and environmental projects relating to energy use throughout the world and which was […]

Thebe Mabanga Veteran theatre practitioner and community worker Phyllis Klotz takes her 12-year-old outfit, the Sibikwa Community Theatre Project, to the National Arts Festival this month. Sibikwa has produced prominent stage and television talent like Grace Mahlaba and Isidingo’s bitchy maid-cum-businesswoman, Tina Jaxa. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed and were rewarded with Vita awards […]

Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER Just when we feared the 1999-2000 South African soccer season would never end, it did. And what a sad finale it proved to be at a chilly, overcast, near-deserted Johannesburg Stadium. Bowing to long-running pressure, this humble scribe took some young relatives along and helped swell the crowd to 2 000 for […]

and the hairy horn Glenda Daniels A 125-strong workforce from an East Rand factory went on strike after their boss refused to allow a witchdoctor into the premises to investigate why they were suffering rashes, impotence and headaches. When the witchdoctor was eventually allowed in, he discovered a piece of hairy animal horn, the removal […]