Duncan Mackay : Athletics In distance running it takes a lot to impress a Kenyan, especially if that Kenyan happens to be Moses Kiptanui, acknowledged as one of the best athletes to come out of Africa. The most articulate and thoughtful of men, Kiptanui is not given to hyperbole, but when recently asked to rate […]

Carel Du Plessis Steve Morris : Rugby The demise of Carel du Plessis as national coach marks more than just the relegation of a moral and well-intentioned man to the relative obscurity he suddenly arrived from, it leaves the man who steps into the hottest seat in world rugby a task that is unenviable by […]

Mungo Soggot Justice Minister Dullah Omar has blocked attempts by hundreds of his long-serving officials to take voluntary retrenchment. His ministry confirmed this week that 742 of its 13 400 workforce had applied for retrenchment packages, but only 43 had succeeded. Omar, who has been accused of gunning for white justice employees, told the Mail […]

Locals are fleeing the district of Likoni after recent massacres, and the promise of more to follow. Chris McGreal reports from Mombasa, Kenya If the Kenyan government is to be believed, a group of marauding drug addicts and drunks has raided a police station, driven 100 000 people from their homes and throttled foreign tourism […]

The security industry is pressing for some policing powers, writes Ann Eveleth The burgeoning private security industry which employs about one in every 200 South Africans, many former police officers and paramilitary members wants the government to give its members arrest and search-and- seizure powers. It also wants the power to demand a name and […]

Justin Arenstein Auditor General Henri Kluever has called for a full-scale commission of enquiry to establish whether relatives or close friends of Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele may have improperly benefited from the contentious R198-million Motheo Construction housing scheme in Mpumalanga. The special report, leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week, is a litany […]

The Angella Johnson Interview Ben du Toit thought he had committed the perfect crime when he had his wife bludgeoned to death in 1992. He had not reckoned on the intensity of her mothers love, or her dogged five-year quest to find the killer of her favoured youngest child. Joyce Donaldson became the mother-in-law from […]

Melvyn Minnaar : Potable pleasures It is the enfant sauvage, if not the fils terrible, of the wine-making business. Of true French nobility with deep historical roots, the Sauvignon Blanc grape has seldom been tamed by the wannabes of the New World vineyards. It either runs wild on them or terrorises them into submission. South […]

From Patagonia to Peoria, from Beijing to Bronkhorstpruit, there was not a dry eye in the global village when Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest last Saturday. Yet how at variance were these outpourings of sentiment with this hard-boiled, market- driven planet at the end of the millennium. Though directed primarily against the […]

Swapna Prabhakaran When a nine-year-old mentally handicapped girl told people she had been raped by her teacher, no one listened until it was too late for the crime to be medically proven. The girl, who attends the Felicitan special school in Brakpan, claims she was raped by a male teacher. It was during the July […]