Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Myths fool thousands and religious myths fool millions. The old apartheid myths of the communist onslaught with reds under the beds and black cut-throats in the ikhaya are dead, but there are plenty of others around. Most countries acclaim democracy as a good method of achieving a government which represents the […]
>From page 22 Moreover, the correlation between human beings eating primates and Aids is poor. As we have noted, Guinea-Bissau has sooty mangabey Aids, but no sooty mangabeys. In northern Congo the pygmies eat primates, but have no HIV. The “natural transfer” theory simply does not deserve the confidence placed in it by most scientists. […]
THE UN Security Council has approved a resolution banning trade in diamonds mined from rebel-held areas of Sierra Leone. Diamonds are the main source of revenue for the Revolutionary United Front, which had taken 500 UN peacekeepers hostage in May. Resolution 1306, proposed by Britain, passed with 14 votes and one abstention from Mali. Exempted […]
Philippa Garson class struggle It would appear that the battle for the soul of the country’s curriculum is far from over. When Minister of Education Kader Asmal took the decision to subject the African National Congress’s flagship education policy, Curriculum 2005, to independent scrutiny in February this year by appointing a review committee to look […]
The decision to award the third cellular licence to Cell C was supported by only three councillors Ivor Powell A week after the government’s announcement that South Africa’s third cellular telephone licence is to be given to the Saudi-backed Cell C consortium, the award seems as shaky and compromised as ever. A cluster of new […]
active Marianne Merten Ten grade 11 and 12 pupils crowd into a cold classroom at Langa High School, in a Cape Town township, on an overcast afternoon to attend extra science tutorials held by University of Cape Town students as part of the ActivScience project. Thirty UCT BSc students visit four township high schools Mondays […]
Howard Barrell over a barrel By a stroke of good fortune, a conference on opposition in South Africa that had been planned for many months opened last week just four days after the formation of the Democratic Alliance (DA). It also coincided with Robert Mugabe’s attempts to digest the outcome of Zimbabwe’s general election. About […]
Taban lo Liyong In the February 4 issue of the science journal Nature it is reported that HIV probably originated from chimpanzees and that the virus was transferred from these primates to humans. Chimpanzees in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are supposedly the culprits. But if HIV originated from chimpanzees, how was it transferred to […]
Mail & Guardian reporters Breaking the silence surrounding the realities of Aids is the theme of Aids 2000, the international Aids conference to be held in Durban this week. But it is likely that Aids 2000 will be remembered more for the “Durban declaration”: a document signed by 5E000 people testifying in their belief that […]
Terry Kurgan This project, though in every sense a development from Family Affairs (the work for which I was selected), doesn’t use my own photographs or my own children at all. I am using found family snapshots. Mostly from the Sixties – and all in colour. They could belong to anybody. And I am printing […]