Labour is fighting rationalisation in the motor industry that is causing a job loss bloodbath in South Africa Glenda Daniels A devastating loss of more than 2?000 jobs a month in South Africa’s metal industry is the cost of the industry’s move to become globally competitive. The release of this shocking figure from the National […]
Andy Capostagno golf There was a certain poignancy in the way the professional golfing season handed the baton on last Sunday. In stifling heat at Leopard Creek Darren Fichardt won the Tour Championship to conclude the Sunshine Tour, while a relaxed Ernie Els climbed into the top 10 with a six-under-par 65 before flying to […]
Jaspreet Kindra South Africa when led by Nelson Mandela acted as a “bully” against the military dictatorship in Nigeria, making a “terrible mistake”, says the African National Congress’s head of international affairs and policy, Mavivi Myokayaka-Manzini. But the country is not going repeat that mistake with Zimbabwe, she said in an interview with the Mail […]
Ferrari has added reliability to its romantic Formula One image as Michael Schumacher prepares to defend his drivers’ title when the season starts in Australia on Sunday Oliver Owen For many years in Grand Prix racing there were two types of team British and Ferrari. There was the odd interloper such as Ligier and Renault […]
Robert Kirby LOOSE CANNON It is not at all surprising that the African National Congress has decided to set up its own online news and information service, ANC Today. What is surprising is that it’s taken so long for the organisation to realise what benefits can accrue from a website totally under party control. It […]
Former president Nelson Mandela spent an hour on Wednesday morning talking to Mail &Guardian editor Howard Barrell and associate editor Sipho Seepe.
AnnMarie Wolpe second look In 1988 Harold Wolpe wrote a short, dense, theoretically engaging book, Race, Class and the Apartheid State. He argued that different and often diametrically opposed political views shared a common platform, which was to end apartheid. Yet these views neglected analyses that took into account the very conditions that upheld the […]
Guy Willoughby theatre Does German expressionism translate tangibly for a South African and contemporary audience? The question will occur to theatre-goers at Kurt Weill and Georg Keiser’s The Silver Lake (first performance February 18 1933), currently in its first local production at Spier. The expressionists sought to mirror psychological realities rather than physical appearances through […]
Sipho None handball It will be all systems go when the Gauteng Handball Association (GHA) clubs return to action later this month, and a German team’s tour will boost attempts to set up women’s leagues in South Africa. GHA, an affiliate of the South African Handball Federaton (SAHF), was formed in 1994 and has a […]
Drinking while pregnant causes irreversible damage, condemning children to an inferior lifestyle Suzan Chala South Africa has the highest figures of foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in the world. According to the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Alcohol Relation Research, Professor Denis Viljoen: “One in 20 children in the Western Cape has FAS.” FAS […]
TITO Mboweni, the governor of South Africa’s central Reserve Bank, says he hopes the political situation in Zimbabwe would stabilise as it was troubling financial markets and foreign investors in the region. “There is a perception that the region may be a bit unstable as a consequence of developments in Zimbabwe,” he said, adding that […]
David Le Page ‘Nothing is being privatised,” says Johannesburg council water representative Jamieel Chand of the council’s management deal with a British-led consortium. The deal was signed two weeks ago and provides for a 12-person team from the winning consortium the Johannesburg Water Management Company (Jowam) to join the 2 500 workers employed by Johannesburg […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION The latest half-hour to emanate from the television sitcom mass-production factory of Penguin Films is Madam and Eve, a conspicuously futile attempt to transpose the characters of a daily comic strip to the screen. The endeavour was doomed from the start and for all the obvious reasons. As I was blathering on […]
Bait. Jamie Foxx plays a very funny, motor-mouthed petty thief who becomes the titular bait for a major thief and computer genius. Monitoring our turbo-tongue is a cop (David Morse) who has had a mic-thingy implanted in Foxx’s jaw. Thus the latter’s every line can be heard by a team of state experts, and what […]
WILLIAM Shakespeare – or at least his contemporaries – were doing cocaine, dabbling with dagga and experimenting with a range of drugs that would impress even the most desperate of junkies. These are the findings of the police forensic science laboratory in Pretoria, which conducted chemical analysis of several English 17th-century clay smoking pipes that […]
Deon Potgieter boxing Jackie “Pressure Cooker” Gunguluza could be facing his Waterloo at the Graceland hotel in Secunda on Sunday. The veteran fighter will be attempting to win the national featherweight title a historic fourth time. At 35 this may be his last shot at the big time, and big time it will be. Not […]
Test cricket in Guyana, a country with a passion for politics, has had its volcanic moments John Young Guyana is the only one of the countries that the South African cricket team will be visiting in the next two months that is not a volcanic island. Politically, however, Guyana has experienced eruptions on a volcanic […]
Australia’s amateur had a transcending pre-eminence in the history of sport Frank Keating Some sporting pundit in the United States the other day tried to forecast the huge impact Tiger Woods looks sure to have on golf. All he could think of as a comparison for what Woods might be headed for was an historical […]
THE UN mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has decided to investigate allegations that seven Danish peacekeepers sexually abused a 13-year-old Ethiopian girl – the day after a Danish army internal inquiry cleared them of any wrongdoing. The seven allegedly assaulted the girl, then forced her to clean the floor while they verbally abused her […]
Khadija Magardie One of the most crucial ways of moni-toring the health of the nation is through mortality statistics. In a chapter on “Health status and determinants” in the South African Health Review, the authors argue that statistics need to be compiled more rapidly and the current disease notification system “needs attention”. The South African […]
Sophie Radice Body Language About 10 years ago I remember my mother telling me that she and another very good-looking friend in her early fifties had decided that they had reached the state of invisibility. I didn’t understand because at the time I was more concerned with different kinds of female invisibility, the kind where […]
Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane A hefty R975-million is in the kitty for skills development, yet about half South Africa’s employers are not claiming grants to implement training. This emerged at a two-day Skills for Productive Citizenship conference last week that launched a skills development strategy in South Africa, which has a 40% unemployment rate. […]
THE date of Uganda’s presidential election has been put back by five days from March 7 to 12 after a meeting of representatives of all six candidates contesting the presidential poll. “We needed more time to hold the election as we had not printed the voter card and we had to incorporate the changes from […]
Khadija Magardie Both legislators and the country’s anti-smoking lobby no doubt will welcome findings that tobacco use has dropped dramatically in South Africa. According to the latest South African Health Review, consumption of tobacco in South Africa “has fallen for eight consecutive years since 1991”. In the year 1998/1999 more than 30-billion cigarettes were released […]
A R5-million ‘donation’ from a United Kingdom armaments firm has not reached its intended target war veterans Paul Kirk Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of millions of rands donated by British Aerospace (BAe) to the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA) a few months before the company was named as the preferred bidder to supply jets […]
Barry Streek The Dutch government would continue supporting NGOs after it cut back on its development assistance to South Africa in 2004, the country’s Prime Minister, Wim Kok, said this week. It would continue current levels R750-million over five years but South Africa did not fit into Holland’s criteria for aid, which include levels set […]
THULI NHLAPO, Johannesburg | Friday IT was raining last weekend when the Greater East Rand Metro mayor Bamvumile Vilakazi was inaugurated at a glamorous celebration at the Kopanong hotel in Benoni. In African culture, they say the rain signals blessings from happy ancestors. Because his name is Bamvumile, (they have agreed), it could be assumed […]
Keith Gottschalk pays tribute to poet and novelist Tatamkhulu Afrika, who turned 80 late last year We’re here to commemorate Tatamkhulu Afrika the human being; to salute Tatamkhulu the citizen activist; and, last but not least, to celebrate Tamtamkulu the writer, by rejoicing on his 80th birthday and bagging his free autograph at his 12th […]
The Mail & Guardian, with Alec Hogg and the Moneyweb team, will launch a brand-new business section, Rands & Sense, to be published weekly in the M&G from March 9. Rands & Sense will bring M&G readers a business section anyone can understand, with insights from leading analysts. The section will be compiled and written […]
Paul Kirk The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions is close to completing a probe into allegedly corrupt practices involving the deputy mayor of Durban, councillor Logie Naidoo. This comes a week after the forensic investigative unit of the Durban municipality began a probe into Visvin Reddy the chair of the Durban unicity tender board and […]
THE Afrikaans community radio station Radio Pretoria has lost its broadcasting license and will have to close down soon. The executive chairman of Radio Pretoria, Mossie van den Berg, said the Independent Communications Authority of SA had rejected the station’s application for a temporary licence. Van den Berg said more than 500_000 “Boere-Afrikaners” listened to […]
Thuli Nhlapo The Doornkuil Farm south of Johannesburg that the African National Congress leased to the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Military Veterans’ Association is neglected. Except for few lean cows chewing long grass inside an electrified fence, there was little sign of life. A face-brick mansion on the property was empty. Peeping through the windows, we […]