Staff Reporter

SOUTH African retailer Shoprite has unveiled a 16% increase in headline per share earnings for the half year to the end of December and said its African and Middle East expansion plans were on track. Headline earnings per share rose to 26.1 cents, despite the constraints of higher fuel costs as well as depressed retail […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday SOUTH Africa’s ex-corruption buster Judge Willem Heath may have been poisoned three years ago, according to his wife, Marita Heath. In an interview on Friday, Heath expanded on a comment to a local women’s magazine, Fair Lady, that she and several doctors believed her husband was probably poisoned in […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday THE South African government recommitted itself on Friday to holding the initial public offering (IPO) of the country’s telephone monopoly Telkom this year. “This commitment was articulated in very clear terms by the president in his state of the nation address and the minister of finance when he delivered […]

A 13-year-old Ethiopian girl escaped forced marriage with a 39-year-old man after she ran away and complained to the police, an Ethiopian press agency reported on Friday. The girl was slated to marry the father of three on February 25, according to the Walta Information Centre, considered close to the Ethiopian authorities. Local police said […]

A BULL elephant that escaped from the Kruger National Park has been shot dead along the N4 highway at Hectorspruit because it was disrupting traffic. The animal had to be shot when it didn’t respond to attempts to chase it back into the bush. The Mpumalanga Parks Board alerted when Hectorspruit residents reported one or […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday MORE than one billion rand ($125m) will be invested in rebuilding Alexandra, Johannesburg’s most overcrowded township as part of government’s urban renewal plan, a housing official announced on Friday. The development of the township, scene of violence last week linked to forced removals of squatters, is already underway, Gauteng provincial […]

Former president Nelson Mandela received the Life Time Award from the first Soweto Awards in Johannesburg on Saturday night.

OWN CORRESPONDENT, AFP, Maputo | Saturday THE South African Air Force could embark on a rescue mission to Mozambique, where more than 40 people have died and 77_000 have lost their homes, a year after the country was ravaged by floods, the Saturday Star reports. Foreign Affairs Director-General Sipho Pityana said: There is no question […]

WARDERS at Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison are to embark on a go-slow in protest against cutbacks in staff numbers at weekends. They say the reductions will endanger the safety of both members and inmates in the seriously overcrowded prison. A shop steward for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said this meant prisoners […]

THERE was little instant gratification for the average revenue-drained citizen in this year?s national budget, unless you happen to be in the lower tax brackets targeted most strongly for tax relief. As is usual, taxes on luxuries and vices such as alcohol and tobacco were marginally increased. The petrol price will be increased by 4,5c […]

THE UN Security Council is considering a commission’s recommendation that sanctions be imposed on countries found to be intentionally violating the UN embargo against Angola’s UNITA rebels. The commission’s recommendation – one of several made at the end of December – is aimed at blocking UNITA from trading diamonds mined from areas it controls for […]

AN artist can continue using Barbie dolls in his photographic renderings, some of which depict dolls posed in sexual positions, a federal appeals court has ruled. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision denying a request by toymaker Mattel Inc to bar Tom Forsythe from using the doll in his photographs and […]

The shack dwellers of Unit F in Thokoza received no notification to vacate the land and were unprepared when the demolishers arrived Thuli Nhlapo The screaming started at 5am when men in red overalls invaded the tiny informal settlement. “It was still dark and I was on my way to the toilet when they approached […]

Paul Kirk Nurses chanting freedom songs took to the streets in the Eastern Cape last week, demanding the axing of the head of the South African National Tuberculosis Association (Santa) the largest organisation responsible for fighting the disease. The Eastern Cape is one of the areas hardest hit by an “epidemic” of tuberculosis (TB) that […]

Ireland are no longer the wooden spoon contenders in the Six Nations Championship Neal Collins A year ago, Warren Gatland’s future in Ireland looked about as secure as a hill climber in Holland or a water diviner in Britain this soggy winter. On February 5 2000 the big Kiwi had seen his Ireland side, consistent […]

Each passing day Zimbabwe looks more like a country destined to bear out the adage that those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. This cradle of a great, ancient civilization, this most promising and beautiful of countries, is in the thrall of a lunatic who, in the service of his hubris, is […]

Adam Sweeting CD OFTHEWEEK It’s difficult to believe that Radiohead once made The Bends, a rock record with power-chords, choruses and a Turtlewax production job. Even listeners raised on Krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A (Parlophone) a mystifying experience. Thom Yorke rejects the notion that the disc was designed to be “challenging”, but […]

Valentine Cascarino food ‘Henry, darling, that food is getting cold. Bacon-and-egg isn’t worth eating when it isn’t hot.” I was sipping a cup of skinny cappucino, waiting for my breakfast at De La Crme, at the bottom of Seventh Street in Melville, when my deer-like ears caught Henry’s distress signal. “This is ridiculous food,” snapped […]

Jabulani Mzaliya right to reply A cursory reading of Craig Tanner’s Letters to the Best Man (February 2 to 8) may excite literary fundi as an honest attempt at avante garde satire. However, the subtext is that Dr Essop Pahad is like a monkey sitting on the President’s shoulder only so that the President may […]

The government has finally established guidelines to screen women for this disease Khadija Magardie For the first time ever the Department of Health has a policy on the single biggest cancer killer of middle-aged, but also younger, black South African women cervical cancer. Approved in the middle of last year at national level, the guide- […]

Victory in Malawi on Sunday would ease South Africa’s passage to next year’s World Cup in Japan and Korea Andrew Muchineripi Rugby legend Naas Botha never hesitated to point out that the Currie Cup was not won in May, so perhaps the third round is a mite premature to pass World Cup judgement on Bafana […]

White South African emigrs carry on as though they’ve been driven into exile, but they’re having a whale of a time, Matthew Krouse discovers in Perth Perth: the city white South African dreams are made of. Nestling serenely on the banks of the mighty Swan River (more a coastal estuary) it fits contradictory descriptions. If […]

We’ve been inundated with calls and e-mails from many regular readers of the Daily Mail & Guardian, The Teacher, PCReview and Q websites who have been unable to access their daily online fix for the past week. The reason is that Internet service provider (ISP) M-Web, which owns two-thirds of the website, last week took […]

Peter Robinson cricket With the best will in the world, this has not been a particularly outstanding week for the administration of South African cricket. Only by the grace of God did the Standard Bank Cup semifinals manage to resolve themselves in time for Wednesday’s final and while Ray Jennings eventually backed down ahead of […]

MUNGO SOGGOT, Johannesburg | Friday TRAFIGURA, the trading company embroiled in the South African state oil kickback scandal, has close links with Marc Rich, the alleged fraudster who broke international oil sanctions against apartheid South Africa and who has been controversially pardoned by former United States president Bill Clinton. Trafiguras South African joint venture, High […]

Dale T McKinley crossfire African National Congress MP Ben Turok (“A conflict is looming between two worlds”, February 16 to 22) tries very hard to emulate those liberal capitalists-cum-sensitive human beings who always want to have it both ways. In Turok’s case, he waxes lyrical about the “new” anti-globalisation social movements taking on nasty capitalist […]

Municipal libraries are cautiously entering the information technology age with plans to introduce limited Internet access Buff Thokoa When was the last time you stepped into a library? If you are like me and enjoy these serenely musty environments with their treasure of information, advice and pure entertainment, you may have noticed a distinct lack […]

This is an open letter to Dr Ben Ngubane, Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, by Mike van Graan, carried on the artslink website Dear Minister Ben Ngubane, It must be quite difficult being the minister responsible for arts and culture right now. The Playhouse, which you’ve promoted as the epitome of transformation, has […]

WARRING factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo have agreed to begin disengaging their troops on March 15. Diplomatic sources said United Nations observers will monitor the withdrawal of forces, which is to be carried out over a two-week period. The six countries and three rebel groups that have been fighting in the central African […]

Budget 2001 continues the theme of increased spending and a lower revenue-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio over the projections made in budget 2000, as announced in the medium-term budget policy statement in October 2000. It also signals a fiscal policy shift from macroeconomic stability concerns to microeconomic reform. The increased spending is based on a […]

Dale T McKinley Second look For a man who might soon find himself facing the life-threatening wrath of a former comrade turned despotic head of state, Dzinashe Machingura shows amazingly little concern. Maybe that’s because he is better placed than most to know exactly who and what he is dealing with. Machingura (aka Wilfred Mhanda) […]

Glenda Daniels Two blind workers were dismissed from a private health company this month and have filed charges at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). This followed a restructuring exercise in the North West company where everyone was required to reapply for their jobs, but the two blind men were not rehired. The […]