Things are changing at Nasa. In October it saw the launch of a spacecraft with an engine that thunders with all the force of a small piece of paper resting on your hand. But, according to researchers working on the mission, the almost imperceptible thrust of this ion drive could be the key to the […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby It is never quite possible to store up enough cynicism for use as a protective membrane between oneself and advertising. Membrane be damned, these days you need armour-plating to keep the witness of the creative directors, the visualisers and the rest of the snake-oil salesmen from getting through to you. It […]

`Woza Friday, my darling!” went the chorus from a traditional song by migrant workers in the olden days. Emerging from their miserable underground life they only looked forward to two things – traditional food, and rest. With no African eateries on the mines, they prepared their sumptuous African meals themselves. These included umgodu (tripe), samp, […]

Stuart Hess A student at Peninsula Technikon, Max Hamata, has received death threats for writing a story on campus prostitution for the Mail & Guardian. Technikon management has also placed pressure on him to reveal his sources. After the article, “Sex for sale on campus”, appeared on September 18, Hamata was harassed and verbally abused […]

Friday night: Martin Nel I had intended spending my weekend club- hopping, and was psyching up for (some) Therapy in Braamies, and was crossing Rockey Street in Yeoville when I got highjacked by Tony from Rockerfellas, bursting to show me his new club in Picadilly Centre, for “black queers”. His last statement confused me, but […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD I have found the Rainbow Nation. It has taken more than two years, but yes, I can unequivocally proclaim that President Nelson Mandela’s multiracial dream is alive and kicking under the bustling new Sundome Casino on the outskirts of Johannesburg. You see, in the gambling world all are equal, […]

orphans David Gough in Kigali Clarissa Uwizcyimana last saw her son Kofi in December 1996, in the squalid refugee camp in eastern Congo where they had taken shelter two years earlier from the civil war and genocide raging in their native Rwanda. She had gone in search of food when a gunfight broke out between […]

deliver democracy Mahmood Mamdani A Second Look It is widely believed the root problem of the African state is the artificial nature of its boundaries. Were these boundaries not first arbitrarily drawn up at the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 and then imposed from the outside? This bit of conventional wisdom needs to be questioned for […]

staff survived With its staff drawn from such diverse backgrounds, there was as much tension within the TRC as at the public hearings, writes Gaye Davis The three-year life span of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been marked by public sensation throughout the hearings. But behind the public drama of tortured facing the […]

enough Guy Oliver When Nomonde Calata speaks of the defining moment of her life – the death of her husband, activist Fort Calata, in 1985 – 13 years disappear as if they had never been. The moment has not been dulled by the grand designs of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In many ways, it […]