FINE ART: Suzy Bell A GERMAN musician from a punk band stared dreamily up at Kali, the dramatic, colourful Hindu goddess who boldly wears a necklace of bloodied male skulls around her neck. In a hash-induced haze, as it was Goa (India) after all, he said: “Look how exciting Indian mythology is. Why is Christianity […]

Top ANC women helped establish the country’s first private deportation camp, reports HEIN MARAIS SEVERAL prominent women members of the African National Congress are linked to a private company running South Africa’s first private deportation camp. The Lindela Accommodation Centre, in Randfontein on the far West Rand, is a central holding point for captured illegal […]

PROTESTS at the inadequacy of South Africa’s stand against crime have become so generalised that they are no longer heard – they are reduced to the drone of the traffic in the street outside. But, at the risk of merely adding to a generalised clamour, some recent events – the theft of an 800kg automatic […]

Tangeni Amupadhi NATIONAL Police Commissioner George Fivaz’s warning this week that members of his force must shape up or ship out has caught even his most senior officers by surprise. In inquiries to provincial police commissioners around the country, the Mail & Guardian learned that they had been informed of the shakeup at the same […]

Justin Arenstein AUTOCRATIC management and a failure to consult with affected rural communities is threatening Mpumalanga’s revolutionary attempts to make its conservation areas pay for themselves. It was with the future of its conservation areas in mind that the Mpumalanga Parks Board granted commercial management of its reserves, which are largely undeveloped and which cost […]

A group of Christian churches has launched a vigorous anti-halaal campaign, reports Jan Raath in Harare A POWERFUL right-wing Christian fundamentalist group in Zimbabwe has launched a campaign against the country’s modest Muslim community to halt what it believes is a “dangerous and violent” religion with its eyes on taking over the government on its […]

Debate rages about the role the media should take in reporting the truth commission, writes Claudia Braude * the run-up to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission conducting hearings on the role played by the media during the apartheid years, the debate surrounding the press playing a reconciliatory role raged among journalists at a workshop held […]

Gustav Thiel AS the new academic year started this week at the University of Stellenbosch, two young black men arrived from the sugarfields of KwaZulu-Natal ready to be trained as wine-makers. Mzokhona Mwemwe (21) and Dumisani Zulu (20), both from Umlazi, were accepted into the university’s diploma course in wine-making, but have been unable to […]

Rehana Rossouw A STELLENBOSCH family facing eviction from the labourers’ cottage they occupied for 50 years won a costly three-month reprieve last weekend when Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom stepped in to help them. Hanekom – who is attempting to limit the evictions of rural farmers through new legislation – managed to persuade the farm […]

This week’s guest writer, Hein Marais, paid a visit to a private deportation centre near Johannesburg A COUPLE of kilometres outside Krugersdorp lives a town of ghosts. The winches that once hoisted gold ore to the surface of Randfontein rust in fields of long grass. Lining the main street are grimy, melancholic buildings. It’s hot, […]