LIKE prospectors heading out into the wild west in search of wealth beyond their wildest dreams, Andrew Sweetnam and Fanie Pelser left South Africa in February to investigate mining opportunities in Angola. They have not been seen again. In March, Namibian advocate Jan Malan left on a similar expedition and disappeared just as mysteriously. Malan […]
TO art dealer Warren Siebrits, the name of his new exhibition space, Gallerie Metroplex, is a bad pun. It’s “gallerie” in the European sense because it’s situated between two trendy shopping centres in Rosebank, Johannesburg — home to the generally well-off, consumer-friendly folk Siebrits refers to in passing as “transplanted Europeans in BMWs”. But it’s […]
Rehana Rossouw A group of Cape Town hikers are outraged by a local farmer’s wife who refused to help them after they were forced to abandon a hike on the snow-capped Overberg mountain range two weeks ago. The party of 17 had slept overnight in a hut owned by the Burger family of the farm […]
Jack Schofield in London Once, the easiest way to put news on the radio was to get someone to read it from a newspaper. The easiest way to put it on television was to film a radio newsreader. That’s not how things work today, except on the World Wide Web, where the standard approach is […]
civil war’ Chris McGreal in Dar es Salaam THE former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere has said that East African troops will, if necessary, invade Burundi in an attempt to pacify the escalating civil war and halt ethnic massacres. Nyerere, the elder statesman mediator between the Tutsi-controlled government and Hutu rebels, said Burundi’s leaders will not […]
Eddie Koch Dirk Coetzee, the police hitman who first exposed the existence of death squads in the police, will not receive legal assistance from the government when he is arrested on Friday this week for the 1981 murder of human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. The decision not to pay Coetzee’s legal costs, even though he […]
Duncan Mackay discovers a computer link to the tangled web of dope trafficking in sport THE Olympic athlete sat in front of his personal computer and dialled a telephone number on his modem. Within seconds, he was connected to an Internet site that offered him the most sophisticated drugs on the market. “Dear Friend and […]
Local is lekker for casino operators as they concentrate on making their money in the cities, writes Justin Pearce FORGET the tourists — it’s local money we’re after. That’s the prevailing view among prospective casino operators, with the result that no one is going to try and build another Sun City. A report by consultants […]
Gareth Patterson The Mail & Guardian last week published a story about 11 lions in a forgotten Ethiopian zoo that experts believe may be related to either of two extinct African subspecies — the Cape lion of Southern Africa or the Barbary lion of North Africa. The lions are descendants of a group kept by […]
South Africa’s involvement in humanitarian assistance in Africa is still under discussion, reports Stefaans BrUmmer THE Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week gave mixed signals whether South Africa would consider contributing troops to a multi-national peace force for Burundi. Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad appeared to contradict President Nelson Mandela this week when he told […]