Phillip Brooks in Cannes ON its 50th birthday, Cannes kept up its twin-faced reputation – an explosive mixture of intense vulgarity and creativity. Not as disorganised as Venice nor as authoritarian as Berlin, Cannes remains the world’s top film festival. So it was a landmark for South African cinema when, for the first time, there […]
Charlotte Bauer in the 15-minute interview. By CHARL BLIGNAUT FORMER Mail & Guardian arts editor, now assistant to the editor at the Sunday Times, Charlotte Bauer, has been awarded the Nieman Fellowship. Along with her family, she gets to study at Harvard University in Massachusetts, United States, for a year. When she heard the news […]
Madeleine Wackernagel in Harare AMID all the rhetoric of new visions and a brighter future, one message came through loud and clear at this year’s Southern Africa Economic Summit, hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF): if the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are serious about attracting foreign investment, the only choice is openness […]
There is one person left on earth who still speaks an ancient Bushman language. Eddie Koch spoke to her TO meet Elsie Vaalbooi, her black frock draped over a frame bent into the shape of a question mark by 96 forbidding years in the sands of the Kalahari Desert, is to come face-to-face with what […]
THE Mail & Guardian today breaks another story pointing to possible corruption in government – this time involving the Department of Housing and a R185-million housing contract. The scandal worries us on two levels. The first and obvious one is the reputation that the “new” South Africa is beginning to earn itself for administrative corruption. […]
position Mahmood Mamdani analyses why South African diplomacy failed in Congo SOUTH AFRICA emerging from apartheid is not the same as Congo emerging from Mobutuism. At least two political differences are worth noting. The South African transition was a compromise between forces for and against apartheid, the Congolese transition is marked by a military victory […]
The ANC fears that internal debates on ethnicity will blow up into a race row if not properly managed. Marion Edmunds reports IN the run-up to an African National Congress special caucus meeting to discuss race and ethnicity this weekend, emotions are running high in the parliamentary caucus with MPs reluctant to speak openly about […]
Libby Young A NEW Web site is set to help academics and teachers source new teaching material and textbooks from around the world. PubText’s plans could revolutionise academic publishing, giving publishers the chance to market their wares on a global scale and enabling teachers to choose from a much wider variety of books. The PubText […]
Suzanne Goldenberg reports from Male, Maldives, on the painfully slow pace of South Asian economic co-operation WHEN the King of Bhutan’s entourage came to the Maldives for a regional summit this month, they flew from Thimpu to Bangkok, Bangkok to Singapore, Singapore to Colombo, and from there to the capital Male. It was more convenient […]
Injuries have hit the Springboks hard and coach Carel du Plessis’s biggest problem will be the locks RUGBY:Steve Morris THERE is a foreboding feeling of desperation creeping into the deliberations of new national coach Carel du Plessis ahead of the arduous season of Test rugby which lies ahead. In the interests of our national rugby […]