He drinks herbal tea, but it is Zim Ngqawana’s music that is the most healing, writes Phillip Kakaza Some call him the most important young composer in South Africa today. He’s credited with bringing together the oldest South African musical traditions and the international avant garde to create a sound that is both local and […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby Following a hot tip-off, last week I wangled permission to visit the maximum security dungeon of a well-known South African prison. I went there to interview a leading activist in jail factions, a man currently serving 243 years for a variety of hideous outrages, particularly against several octogenarian blind nuns in […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Athol Fugard may have been writing about inhabitants of the electricity department’s disused building in downtown Johannesburg had the characters of his People are living there not been too few and employed. The inhabitants of the building belonging to the Market Theatre Company – where Fugard’s play premiered in March 1977 – […]

My department and I were disturbed by the leader story in your last week’s edition entitled “Trade Officials Solicit R10 000 for `Free’ Dinner”. The article suggests that some untoward activity and abuse of funds has been practised by DTI officials. Even facts in the story don’t substantiate the allegations. The facts are: l The […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD `Please let him touch your breast. They’re beautiful and he loves breasts,” pleaded the light-skinned black woman sitting on a sofa beside me and my partner. Her boyfriend, a bespectacled German engineer, was draped over the side idly plucking at my suspenders. In a room down the hallway of […]

These days, the Million Dollar Challenge is more about cracking the nod than it is about the prize money, reports Andy Capostagno The most delicious irony of the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge is that you have to be a millionaire in the first place just to crack an invite. A decade ago when Welshman Ian […]

answered Jann Turner Friday: After a month, I have a whole day off. I’m ready for a day paying off bills. I’m feeling strong, so I start with the post office. Eventually I get to the service-with-a-scowl teller and I pay my phone bill. I’m two-and-a-half weeks late, but hell, that’s not long – is […]

rewards 30 years on David Gough from Nairobi As Kenya prepares to celebrate 35 years of independence next week, veterans of the guerrilla army who fought a brutal campaign against British colonial rule say that they have been rewarded with nothing but poverty and hardship, and have nothing to celebrate. Hundreds of survivors of the […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Senior executives of The Saturday Star and The Sunday Independent were this week informed of plans to collapse their newspapers under the editorial control of The Star. Executives were shown paper plans of the new arrangements which are part of the profitable Independent Newspapers group’s plans to retrench staff and dramatically […]