Mail &Guardian Reporter KWAZULU-NATAL attorney general Tim McNally has two targets in his sights at the moment: Magnus Malan and other generals acussed of “hit squad” activity; and the Mail & Guardian, accused of defamation. McNally this week served summons on the M&G, claiming R250 000. This arises from articles published in the M&G on […]

The Mail & Guardian and its journalists won a string of awards this year. The English Academy of Southern Africa awarded columnist Bafana Khumalo the Thomas Pringle Award for television reviews. The Kaiser Family Foundation named journalist Pat Sidley Health Writer of the Year. Literary editor Shaun de Waal (left) was runner-up in the Leserskring/Leisure […]

1 Which Constitutional Court judge has not served in the court since taking office in 2 Whom did air charter company Foster-Webb sue for R50 000 in November over the non-payment of a two-year-old bill? 3 At which South African university was a lecture interrupted by a student falling through the ceiling? 4 To which […]

Etienne Mureinik, one of the 13 academics who accused Professor William Makgoba, draws some harsh lessons from the controversy of the year As the year draws to a close, it is perhaps time to step back from the detail of the Makgoba affair, and ask what larger lessons it can teach. Three stand out. The […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter TWO KwaZulu-Natal massacres in a week — adding to the highest weekly “political” death toll in the province in six months — contrasts sharply with a strong national trend of decreased violence. Police said 10 armed men attacked a kraal at Mvutshini on KwaZulu-Natal’s South Coast on Tuesday night, killing an […]

Dear Nelson, I write to you in a great hurry and with much regret to tell of a terrible misfortune. Returning home recently from the Push-a- Bottletop Challenge Cup for Veterans at the Orlando community hall, I happened to see the postman struggling to push what appeared to be several envelopes into a drain pipe. […]

Anton Harber reviews the progress of the new South Africa now that it has grown from babyhood to become a toddler Six hundred days is not an awfully long time. A baby of that age — 20 months — might just be starting to use simple words, and would only recently have started to walk. […]

THE ARTS British novelist Kingsley Amis (73) Actor Jeremy Brett, the definitive Sherlock Novelist Bridgid Brophy (66) Science fiction author John Brunner (60), grandfather of cyberpunk, of a stroke Avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer Don Cherry (58), of liver failure Actor Elisha Cook (91) — the trigger-happy kid in The Maltese Falcon Canadian author Robertson […]

Marion Edmunds looks at how the political parties survived the year and the local This year has proved South African voters prefer the devils they know. Society may be in the throes of social change, but the electorate has hung on doggedly to the politicians it elected on April 27 1994. The local government elections […]

Mail & Guardian reporter For some, acknowledging the terrible deeds committed by the custodians of law and order in south Africa has been a painful process. To discover tax payers’ money had been secretly used to fund a civil war. And that the Christian Government had repeatedly lied when questions were asked both inside and […]