Mark Milner in Sao Paulo PEDRO MALAN does not look like a gambler. Pipe-smoking and bespectacled, he projects the image of the career civil servant he has been for much of his working life. Malan, however, is now Brazil’s minister of finance; a key player in President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s attempt to wean the country […]

Joshua Amupadhi traces how the virus was identified by a Johannesburg doctor before it could spread too far `Angel,” the Gabonese doctor who unwittingly brought the Ebola virus to South Africa, flew home on Wednesday. Back in Libreville he is popularly known as the “Angel” because of the lives he saves so regularly at the […]

Stuart Hess THE South African embassy in Washington this week disputed claims by human rights organisations in South Africa and the United States that 18-year-old Azikiwe Kambule is being mistreated in prison. Kambule is awaiting trial, and is said to face the death penalty, in Mississippi state on a charge of being an accomplice in […]

Rehana Rossouw FAITHFUL members of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) continued to flock to the organisation’s activities this week, despite an initiative by religious leaders to caution against its militancy. On Wednesday night, more than 1 000 Pagad members marched to a house in Lansdowne, Cape Town, which they claimed was owned by an […]

The contest for a new Free State premier has begun, but is bedevilled by anger and befuddlement, reports Rehana Rossouw NOMINATIONS from branches of the African National Congress for a premier in the Free State close today, but there is still little clarity about who is eligible to stand. Some branches are nominating deposed Premier […]

Bart Barnes ALGER HISS (92), the former State Department official whose 1950 perjury conviction for lying to a grand jury about communist espionage activity became one of the most celebrated and dramatic spy cases of this century, died last week in New York. He had emphysema. Hiss, who served almost four years in prison after […]

THEATRE: Glynis O’Hara THE first 15 minutes or so of Two Straight Queers seemed to confirm my worst fears, with in-jokes that couldn’t leap the ghetto’s perimeter fence. But all of a sudden it took off and I found myself laughing – really hard. A gay man, Bernie, is left R2-million by his uncle, on […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj kicked off a two-day conference with lawyers and interest groups on the future of state accident insurance designed to fuel debate on the issue by laying down the law and singling out lawyers who had attacked his proposals. In a manner described by attending lawyers as “pretty […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm `THE story that follows is about Minnesota. It evokes the abstract landscape of our childhood – a bleak, windswept tundra, resembling Siberia except for its Ford dealerships and Hardee’s restaurants. It aims to be both homey and exotic, and pretends to be true.” So says Ethan Coen, producer and co-writer of Fargo, […]

Glynis O’Hara QKUMBA ZOO’s song The Child Inside reached number one on America’s Billboard Club Charts this week. The chart reflects what is being played at most clubs throughout the United States. It looks like they could be South Africa’s most commercially successful musical export since Manfred Mann invaded the British charts in the Sixties. […]