Hazel Friedman Secret liaisons with the Soweto Committee of Ten. Dangerous midnight manoeuvres through townships to meet banned activist Albertina Sisulu during the height of South Africa’s State of Emergency. This is what it took to maintain one of the best-kept secrets of the anti-apartheid struggle: a clandestine Israeli-ANC initiative — the Israeli and South […]
Simon Segal A repeat performance two years later, and still the markets and critics did not learn. The sky did not fall in when Derek Keys resigned as finance minister in October 1994. The equally sudden resignation of Keys’ successor from the private sector, Chris Liebenberg, again caused an over-reaction, especially from those traders who […]
Everyone pitched in to make the Klein Karoo’s outreach project a success. But was it? BAFANA KHUMALO was there MIDDELPLAAS looks like the kind of place where the arrival of a train makes the front page of the local newspaper (if there is a local rag). Desolate, it lies in a valley 20km from Oudtshoorn. […]
TENNIS: Jon Swift THE Italians are a people full of surprises. It is difficult to get things moving in the beautiful country, yet the nation had the sensitivity and foresight to sandbag the wall which carries the breathtaking fresco of the Last Supper during the time of the last global nastiness. And the chapel of […]
A proposal for a government news agency has fuelled the debate on the control of the media. Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports The South African Communication Service (Sacs) has thrown itself into the debate on the ownership and control of the media and has drawn strong criticism from some major newspaper groups. Sacs head Solly Kotane proposes […]
Thabo Mbeki’s task team is fine-tuning a strategy to tackle its brief on government communications, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE 10-member media task group appointed late last year by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki plans to take trips abroad in a bid to conduct in loco inspections of foreign government communication departments. Task group convener Mandla Langa […]
Archery isn’t a big sport in South Africa, but members of the Olympic team are out to show that they can shoot with the best in Atlanta ARCHERY: Julian Drew COUNTRIES like Korea and Japan count their competitive archers in the tens of thousands and most of them compete in the recurve (Olympic) bow category. […]
This week the Mail & Guardian suffered the indignity of a conviction in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on charges of crimen injuria for attempting to place under electronic surveillance a meeting attended by the former Civil Co-operation Bureau commander Staal Burger in 1992. The magistrate fined us R3 000 and the editor an additional R1 […]
Chris McGreal looks at the man behind Nigeria’s greatest martyr — and finds someone who is not a saint Ken Saro-Wiwa barely raised his head from the wooden dock to acknowledge the man who probably did as much as any witness to despatch him to the gallows. Across the dilapidated courtroom, Mohammed Kobani gave a […]
ROAD RUNNING: Julian Drew THE make of beer that the sponsor has chosen to adorn this year’s Two Oceans Marathon may have changed from Ohlsson to Castle Lite but there is certainly nothing lightweight about the field assembled for Saturday’s race. Last year’s top five — Simon Malindi, Poland’s Jaroslaw Janicki, Elphas Ginindza and Sipho […]