Mail & Guardian reporter A TEAM of prosecutors worked around the clock this week putting the final touches to the 40-odd-page indictment against former defence minister Magnus Malan and nine others. Malan, former Military Intelligence chief General Tienie Groenewald and eight other former and serving officers are charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to […]

>From zouk to mbalax, world music is available — and pushing back the borders of Anglo- American culture. SHAUN DE WAAL dips into its SOME years ago, I lamented in these pages that there was more African and Third World music to be found in London’s Virgin Megastore than in all of South Africa. So […]

Philippa Garson LEADING academics are pitted against each other in the latest university furore which involves the resignation of the University of Transkei’s (Unitra) vice-chancellor, Alfred Moleah. Moleah’s resignation comes in the wake of months of conflict with the university Council, which comprises prominent academics, educationists and political figures, including its chair Fatima Meer, Blade […]

Urban planners, white suburbs, and the homeless are locked in a struggle of competing needs, writes Justin Pearce POLITICAL squabbling has halted Johannesburg’s plans to house its homeless. Shack settlements have proliferated in the city while municipal and provincial authorities have failed to reach a universally acceptable plan to accommodate squatters in formal housing. At […]

Karen Harverson A ROW within the ranks of the black construction industry may damage its initiative to fund a developmental programme for emerging black contractors. The programme is aimed at helping black contractors acquire the skills necessary to participate in the mainstream construction industry. All contractors wishing to be part of the home building industry […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale YOU can relax. Pierce Brosnan makes a fine James Bond in Martin Campbell’s GoldenEye, an otherwise disappointing foray into moviedom’s most successful franchise — 007. The story revolves around schemers and baddies in the post-Soviet world who are intent on worldwide cataclysm ( as usual ), and that’s the major problem with […]

Hazel Friedman ‘GOD has blessed us,” says single mother Mavis A year ago she was about to be dumped on the pavements. Today she and 434 tenants from seven buildings in the highrise slum of Hillbrow are home-owners through a unique scheme that could solve the inner city housing problem. Called the Seven Buildings Project […]

Bronwen Jones TEARS and righteousness make a potent mix in an angry young woman out to fight the wealth and might of big industry. Sitting atop a crumbledown dam looking over her community, Rene Smith, 21, adjusts blue rimmed spectacles and says: “We will not let them build their dam on our doorsteps. We will […]

Marion Edmunds SOUTH AFRICAN Broadcasting Corporation decision-makers are considering changing the course of SAfm and going for a niche market by targeting the new South African elite. The station has lost 25 percent of its advertising this year and, as reported last week, its audience is a paltry 250 000. A small team — headed […]

SOME staff members of the African Languages Department have expressed outrage at the way Makgoba handled their former acting head, Robert Herbert, an American academic. In a letter seen by the Mail & Guardian, Makgoba declined a request from Herbert for the renewed contract of one of his staff members, and then told Herbert that […]