Andy Duffy The head of state education in the Northern Cape faces a disciplinary hearing next week on charges of misconduct. Zodwa Dlamini is alleged to have defied MEC for Education, Arts and Culture Tina Joemat and provincial Director General Martin van Zyl in their attempts to manage the embattled provincial education department. The province […]

Mark Gevisser COUNTRY OF MY SKULL by Antjie Krog (Random House, R90) ‘We boers,” wrote Rian Malan in Business Day recently, “are terminally fed up” with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has become “increasingly irksome to those of us who thought we attained a certain nobility in 1994 by surrendering power to a mistrusted […]

Tim Radford Scientists who identified a single gene that protects against cancerous chemicals said this week a cancer-prevention pill could be undergoing trials within a decade. The Scottish team’s research found that a single gene may determine whether a smoker develops lung cancer. In an experiment with mice, scientists demonstrated that the gene provides a […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Legal assistance from advocates has become far too expensive for most South Africans. The Society of Advocates has set fees of up to R1 080 an hour and as much as R10 800 a day. The Johannesburg Bar Council approved the new fee guidelines last week. The R540 to R1 080 hourly rates […]

Rastafarians in South Africa want freedom of religion and the right to smoke ganja, writes Zebulon Dread Arthur Molisiwa is doing a masters degree in mathematics and his father is chair of a corporate giant; Moses Mlangeni holds a BSc in economics and is doing a postgraduate training course in business journalism sponsored by New […]

Andy Capostagno : Cricket First of all, the apologies. Last week I suggested that the national selectors were myopic baboons who could not differentiate a class off-spinner from a kicked in car door. I also managed to retire Brian McMillan somewhat prematurely. My only excuse is that newspaper deadlines coincide with important announcements about as […]

Peter Frost : On stage in Cape Town The love between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has inspired many a romantic fancy on stage, none slushier than the recent West End musical Always, a sunset-and-syrup escapade – as nauseating as it was, according to British playwright Snoo Wilson, untrue. Wilson’s new drama HRH, by contrast, […]

Janet Smith A campaign to revive workers’ culture is at the heart of the Workers’ Library and Museum’s May Day celebrations and 10th anniversary festivities at the Electric Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, on Saturday May 2. Omar Don Mattera, Jeremy Cronin, Mi Hlatshwayo, Alfred Qabule, Nise Malange and other South African poets will perform on […]

An overlap between Robert McBride’s outlandish charge sheet and the discredited Meiring report suggests an intelligence set-up, write Mungo Soggot and Stefaans Brmmer Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Robert McBride conspired with Cuban and American diplomats to overthrow the ANC government: that is among the bizarre claims which have kept McBride in a Mozambique prison cell for […]

Robert Kirby : LOOSE CANNON I keep telling the editor of this paper that he needs to get much more with it, to shrug off the air of 1960s priggish decency that pervades the entire Mail & Guardian enterprise. Just because Jeff Zerbst worked in what were then The Weekly Mail offices shortly before he […]