“Speak not ill of the dead” is a maxim which has long been honoured more in the breach. Those who would attribute lack of respect for the dead to modern fashion — the cowardice of the tabloids (the threat of libel action having been consigned to the worms), or the trend towards “obitchery” — might […]

bashing Mail & Guardian Reporter GAY-BASHING has spread to Namibia with Swapo and President Sam Nujoma saying homosexuals are white and perverts. Two years ago human rights organisations were horrified when Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said homosexuals were worse than pigs and dogs. Now Nujoma has slammed gays and the ruling party Swapo has come […]

Stellenbosch University `top-bestuur’ faces revolt over secret pay-outs and management style. Marion Edmunds reports THE administration at Stellenbosch University, bastion of Afrikaner education, is facing a rebellion from its academics and students over its management style and secret pay-outs to five senior staff. It also emerged this week that the university has been fined R90 […]

The bizarre life of the man who bombed ANC headquarters in London, and who was crushed to death last week, is recounted by Phillip van Niekerk WHEN a spy dies, one is left guessing what knowledge he has taken to the grave with him. Peter Casselton, London spymaster of the apartheid government, resident of Vlakplaas, […]

Caitlin Davies SWEET-TOOTHED elephants are going to have a field day if a sugar plantation gets under way in northern Botswana, in what conservationists call one of the most environmentally unfriendly schemes imaginable. The sugar plantation is reportedly to be built on the sand bridge behind the Chobe River and inside the Kasane Forest Reserve […]

TRYING to find out what’s happening on Radio Metro is a bit like trying to rea d the true mind of Communist China. Forget it. A simple request to their publi c relations department for a schedule took four days to be answered, and when it came it was but a skeletal construct. Repeated attempts […]

action Tangeni Amupadhi JULIA BOPAPE was the mother of an alleged criminal. Last week a crowd of 4 000 in Mamelodi, Pretoria, stoned her to death for the deeds of her son, Handsome Bopape. She was killed at a meeting during which the community accused her of encouraging her son to commit crimes, and of […]

The first stop for Investment South Africa=20 is South-East Asia and interest is strong,=20 Rafiq Bagus tells Madeleine Wackernagel RAFIQ BAGUS’S new job is persuading=20 foreigners to invest in South Africa. No=20 easy task given the fear of crime, but in=20 his previous incarnation at Wesgro, he was=20 instrumental in bringing Levi Strauss to=20 the […]

Stephen Gray THE BUCHAN PAPERS by JDF Jones (Harvill, R79,95) THE great pleasure of a literary hoax is external to the book itself. Did JDF Jones really recently discover the manuscript of this lost John Buchan novel, tied in a dusty pink ribbon, among the Lionel Phillips papers in the Barlow-Ra nd archives, and rig […]