Sex work is a major income-generating opportunity but most sex workers want to leave the profession, a recent Hillbrow study shows. David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels report In today’s insecure job market, any employment that requires no CV, low skills and no education, allows you to be your own boss, work your own hours and […]
Belinda Beresford The Anglican church is moving to save “God’s Babies” with a programme to cut the level of mother-to-child transmission. The move by the church which is increasingly involved in combatting the HIV/Aids epidemic comes at the same time as the news that the government has halted a pilot project to provide an anti-retroviral […]
David Beresford Another Country Recent genetic evidence supporting the view that mankind is descended from a single woman in Africa and disclosing that man only arrived tens of thousands of years later is obviously startling. It would suggest (at least to my unscientific mind) that if humankind was cast in the Almighty’s image then he […]
Pule waga Mabe African National Congress MP Peter Mokaba and other members of the ANCYouth League’s “old guard” were influential in the surprise re-election of Malusi Gigaba as league president at its national congress at the weekend. And in an interview this week Gigaba echoed former youth league president Mokaba who had told the 1996 […]
John Young cricket To win away from home is every sportsman’s dream. Naas Botha did it at Newlands, Kaiser Chiefs used to do it. Rugby and soccer, however, require only an hour or two of concentrated effort. To win a five-Test cricket series is the ultimate. When Jacques Kallis took the final wicket of the […]
It could take fund managers considerable time to lure investors back to the domestic unit trust market after its poor performance over the past six months Neil Thomas The daggers are out for fund managers as another set of quarterly unit trust results show how poorly many local funds have performed. Investors should be annoyed, […]
Matthew Krouse By April 9, officials of the National Council of SPCAs in South Africa had not viewed the Mexican film Love’s a Bitch (Amores Perros) with its controversial dogfight that almost led to its banning and subsequent age restriction in the United Kingdom last year. They have, however, made contact with their British counterpart […]
Funeral pyres, decomposing corpses, conspiracy theories, xenophobia: the similarities between the plagues of medieval Europe and Britain’s current foot and mouth epidemic are marked, writes John Vidal Each day, many thousands died. The land was empty, the villages were silent. Fires smouldered for weeks, the acrid palls of smoke drifting over the hills and valleys. […]
Peter Robinson cricket Best bit of commentary out of the Caribbean so far has come from Sir Vivian Richards. “If he’s a number nine,” he opined, casting a magisterial eye over Shaun Pollock, “then I’m a Jewman.” As if to demonstrate that he has no beef with any particular religious persuasion, Sir Viv followed this […]
The agency tasked with disbursing funds to combat poverty is not meeting its targets David Macfarlane Creating the momentary impression that you’ve stepped on to the flightdeck of the Starship Enterprise, electric-blue light glows and hums in the irradiated reception area of the National Development Agency’s (NDA) elegant new offices in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Astronomically, the […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION The tyranny of television stations can and may soon be “tamed”, to use the expression of a commentator in the New York Times. Cracking the metaphorical whip will be a new piece of technology, a telly-top box already in production in the United States and the United Kingdom. It’s called a digital […]
Tim Wood American notes Iwas bitterly disappointed to learn that M-Web intends delisting. It’s not that it was a surprise since Moneyweb first reported on the delisting rumours, but to see it announced was a shock. M-Web was the point stock for Internet plays and it has given up with hardly a shot being fired. […]
Thebe Mabanga in your ear Eleven years of being a cultured, avid and habitual listener of radio may not be enough to claim to be a guru, but it certainly helps to distinguish good radio from the bad and unbearable. So, to reflect on a period during which the medium has been a consuming and […]
Best-performing South African unit trust, quarter: Futuregrowth Pure Equity, 15,22% (sell-sell, income reinvested) Last quarter’s winner: Sage Global, 16,23% Best-performing South African unit trust, one year: Liberty Resources R, 55,98% (sell-sell, income reinvested) Last quarter’s winner: Sage Global, 51,91% Best-performing South African unit trust, three year: Liberty Resources R, 230,7% (buy-sell, income reinvested) Last quarter’s […]
Martin Spring london calling It jumped out of the tables of investment performance I was reviewing as I flew to Hong Kong on Sunday a fund that has not only delivered a return of 439% over the past three years with below-average risk for its sector, but that has even managed to increase in value […]
Sarah Bullen Brian and two friends are in their mid- to late thirties. They all own houses, drive good cars and are what would be described as financially secure, meaning they have managed to put some money away. Each of them had opted to put his money into unit trusts, but late last year, after […]
Seyed Abdollah Hoseini Right of Reply The front page picture of last week’s Mail and Guardian was a distorted, sensational depiction of Ashura, a sacred period on the Muslim calendar, and created negative perceptions about the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (S), Imam Hussein (AS), and his martyrdom. It likely also had the effect of […]
whipping boy With the pool boosted by R600?000-plus from a carryover at the Vaal on Tuesday, the pick six at Newmarket on Thursday night assumes an attractive glow. It’s all too easy to be suckered into laying out too much money on these occasions in the hope of a life-changing dividend. Playing the pick six […]
Marianne Merten Cape Flats chess champs Kenny and Craig Willenberg are on their way to the exclusive South African Closed Championship in Pretoria later this month, courtesy of generous Mail & Guardian readers. And another reader, who wants to remain anonymous, is ensuring the brothers can defend their national titles at the South African Junior […]
Fluctuations in the rand and interest charges make a mockery of the original R30-billion price Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot The cost of South Africa’s increasingly controversial arms package has risen to more than R50-billion from an original R30-billion, according to parliamentarians monitoring the deal. The chair of the standing committee on public accounts, Gavin […]
Rob Stout A Painted House by John Grisham (Century) What does an author do when he has become so successful that he has worked his genre to the point of endless repetition? John Grisham, the current patent-holder of legal thrillers in the United States, has left the safety of the courtroom for rural Arkansas to […]
art movie of the week Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iarritu, Love’s a Bitch (Amores Perros in Spanish) tells the story of three very different types of people, runs for two-and-a-half hours and, if that sounds a bit clinical, it’s a passionate but lucid masterpiece. There are no special effects, no grand skyline shots to tell […]
What better way for the group to get things back on track than acquiring Billiton, suggest London analysts Ken Gooding in London Some London analysts are telling clients that Anglo American is likely to disturb the friendly merger between Billiton and BHP by aggressively topping the Australian group’s terms. They are suggesting that Anglo cannot […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Sanco Investment Holdings (SIH), the investment arm of the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco), one of the pillars of the anti-apartheid struggle, has lost track of its assets and investments worth R80-million. The managing director of SIH, Moses Mayekiso, said this week that his company has lost investment records, financial […]
Hound hunting is the latest fad in South Africa, after it was banned in Zimbabwe Fiona Macleod South African hunting out-fits are offering overseas clients the chance to hunt predators, especially highly endangered leopards, with dogs. Using hounds to hunt down leopards is becoming an increasingly popular marketing tool among local safari operators after it […]
Ebrahim Harvey left field Our Constitution is better than that of the previous regime, which embodied brutal racism in all facets of life. But the proposed anti-terrorism laws to curb rising urban terror in Cape Town, which provide for the reintroduction of detention without trial, has prompted debate on whether it will tarnish our democratic […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday POLICE have denied that they used teargas against thousands of soccer fans at Johannesburgs Ellis Park stadium, where a stampede on Wednesday night killed at least 47 people – including women and children – and injured at least 85 more. Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour is to meet senior soccer officials […]
Martin Gillingham road running The Two Oceans marathon goes ahead in Cape Town on Saturday and features probably the strongest field yet gathered for the elite race. It contains Comrades champions, such as Vladimir Kotov, Nick Bester and Charl Mattheus, as well as former winners Zithulele Sinqe, Isaac Tshabalala and Vusi Nhlapo. The women’s entries […]
Shaun de Waal Body Language One hates to sound like Bill Clinton, but what exactly is meant by “having sex”? The “Shock survey on gay sex” story in last week’s Mail & Guardian rather blurred the issue an issue which one suspects remains fuzzy in the minds of many heterosexuals, not just those who are […]
Bodybuilding legend Reg Park has just been honoured by an Arnold Schwarzenegger Lifetime Achievement Award in the sport Roshila Pillay Reg Park is a lot of things. He’s from Yorkshire, lives in South Africa but, curiously, has an American accent. He is also a bodybuilding demigod, three-time Mr Universe winner, businessman and the man who […]
SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Komatipoort | Thursday SOUTH African and Norwegian scientists are using sophisticated technology to track nine rare tiger fish in Mpumalanga’s Crocodile River. Scientists from the Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB), the Kruger National Park and Norwegian Institute of Nature Research implanted sophisticated radio transmitters on the adult fish near Komatipoort last week to determine […]
Deon Potgieter boxing What is the Rose of Soweto to do? Should Dingaan Thobela hold on in a bid to reclaim the World Boxing Council (WBC) title that by rights should still be his, or walk away from a sanctioning body that is losing credi- bility daily as a result of its shoddy treatment of […]