The controversial industrial development of Saldanha Bay, near the west coast wetlands, is more about politics than about the environmental impact of a steel mill, writes Neville Sweijd THE decision of Lampie Fick, Western Cape MEC for Environment and Tourism, to rezone a farm on the Saldanha Bay coast from agricultural to industrial land has […]

Zola Skweyiya, Minister for Public Services and Administration, in The Mark Gevisser Profile To drive into Transvaal House, where the behemoth Public Services Commission looms over its kingdom of Pretoria, you need to ascend a ramp and go through a security check next to a trash-filled dumpster. The pungent concoction of koptoe security guard and […]

The Mail & Guardian, like other local newspapers, cannot consider itself to be exempt from public analysis, but it is the critical self-consciousness of the new South African state, writes Colin Paisley BRUCE COHEN certainly knows a lot about the problem of media control in this country. His article (Mail & Guardian, December 1 to […]

Sharon Hammond and Hazel Friedman Four years after a high concentration of arsenic was first found in drinking water at Anglovaal’s New Consort gold mine in Barberton, Mpumalanga, the poison is alleged to have claimed its first victim. An investigation into the mine started recently after 2 000 residents were poisoned by drinking water in […]

Dear Walter, The great debate is upon us. Or at least it is upon me. It descended with great abruptness early in the morning a couple of days ago, when I tottered out of bed and, as is my habit, made my way to the bathroom and the adjoining place to reassure myself as to […]

Rowan Callaghan Local spaza shop-owners in Ivory Park no longer have to make long journeys to replenish supplies now that the Ivory Park spaza wholesalers have set up shop in the township. The wholesalers operate from blue shipping containers, donated by Safmarine, in a mall- type complex, selling everything from food stuffs to building materials. […]

Rowan Callaghan Two-year-old Fartoun plays innocently in the doorway of the cavernous room at Angelo hostel just outside Boksburg, indifferent to the omnipresent stench which fouls the air. Her family fled civil war in Somalia, but they feel abandoned in South Africa. The little girl’s mother has left home for the day to see if […]

Mehlo Mvelase A VISIBLY angry King Goodwill Zwelithini for the first time blamed the Inkatha Freedom Party publicly for violence last weekend — after his brother, Prince Mbousi Zulu, had escaped a hail of bullets fired at his car. Zwelithini’s outburst, during a traditional ceremony in KwaZulu-Natal’s KwaNongoma last Saturday, marks a new low in […]

CRICKET: Jon Swift WE ARE two days into the scheduled five of the pivotal Test in the series against England. All the frustration of the rained-out opening confrontation at Centurion Park, matched only by the vexation of the South African bowlers, thwarted by Mike Atherton and Jack Russell in the interminably long fifth day at […]

Gaye Davis SOUTH Africa has not yet begun to wrestle with the question of whether the country should become a safe haven for, and even help, exiled movements fighting for democracy in their home countries — but the issue is at least on the Members of the Nigerian grouping Democratic Alternative met members of Parliament’s […]