DEMOCRATIC Party Chief Whip Douglas Gibson said on Friday that statements to the effect that the DP will support the draft Firearms Control Bill in its present form are unmandated and factually incorrect. It was reported earlier this week that the party had decided to support the legislation. Gibson said in a statement that the […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Get those stories out of your bottom drawer – or start writing now! The South African Internet literary journal, LitNet, which has been a notable success in Afrikaans and is now expanding into English, is running an online creative writing workshop and is calling for stories. WriteAgain, sponsored by Penguin publishers […]

David Beresford Another Country South Africa is about to ban discrimination, which, considering this country’s track record in the 20th century and previously, seems a reasonable thing to do. In fact, it is to be outlawed from February 4 2000. This can be stated with the certainty of constitutional edict, the founding document of our […]

In the week the SABC showed graphic footage of the carnage in Sierra Leone, a Port Elizabeth businessman has been accused of fuelling the civil war in that country. Peter Dickson reports A Canadian probe into the diamond trade in Sierra Leone has accused a controversial Port Elizabeth businessman of peddling weapons and mercenaries in […]

system? Serjeant at the bar Last week the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, found himself under the political cosh. He introduced a Bill to restrict the right to trial by jury such that in a range of cases the choice of a jury trial would be given to the presiding magistrate. The Bill passed through […]

We can only estimate, but we think the slaves may number 100E000. We have freed 20E000 so far. Some slave masters have hundreds of slaves – chattel slaves. They are kept like cattle. Others are kept in what the government euphemistically calls peace camps. International aid organisations are aware of these camps. They send food […]

TANZANIAN Defence Minister Edgar Majogo left Dar es Salaam on Friday for talks in the Burundian capital Saturday on border security, Radio Tanzania reported in a broadcast monitored in Nairobi. The radio said Majogo was accompanied by top government and military officials. The team is also expected to discuss the ongoing conflict in Burundi between […]

I am snowed-in in the United States, and although it is initially quite exciting, the novelty begins to fade as the implications begin to sink in.

hard Scotch Tagwireyi South African universities are experiencing a dramatic fall in enrolment, with the viability of some campuses threatened by a drop of almost 30% in student intake between 1998 and 1999. Exceptions to this are the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, both of which claim to have stable enrolment […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The report on taxi violence in Gauteng released this week catalogues extraordinary details of police officers in Pretoria joining forces with taxi assassins, even escorting them in police Casspirs. The report reveals details of how police officials leased government property, including firearms, bulletproof vests and police uniforms, to taxi associations for […]