Staff Reporter

A SOUTH African expert has condemned an Internet offer to sell penguins as pets. Paul Britton, chairman of the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, which oversaw the mammoth rehabilitation of 40 000 oil-slicked penguins after a ship sank off Cape Town’s Table Bay last June, said penguins are not easily domesticated […]

SOME 300 Nigerian prison inmates seized control of their jail, disarming the warders and staging a protest at bad conditions before police quelled the unrest. Police said they had foiled a jailbreak bid in in the state capital, Akwa, in the southeast of the country. Nigerian prisons are notorious for overcrowding and poor feeding and […]

A THIRD river is threatening to worsen killer floods in central Mozambique, which have already killed 17 people and affected some 280_000. Some 30_000 people in Mozambique have been forced to leave their homes, while another 60_000 have been displaced in neighboring Malawi. Mozambican authorities say the Save River now threatens to add to the […]

BRIAN LIGOMEKA, Blantyre | Saturday MALAWIS most important social services, including the country’s army, face collapse within the next four years when an estimated 25% of government officials begin dying of HIV/Aids, says a new international study. The study, by the London-based PANOS Institute, indicates that between 25 and 50% of officials employed in Malawi’s […]

AN extra soft drink a day gives a child a 60% greater chance of becoming obese, new research suggests. A US study published this week in The Lancet medical journal said the soft drink-obesity link was independent of the food the children ate, how much television or videos they watched and the amount that they […]

GUMISAI MUTUME, Washington DC | Friday CIVIL wars have blunted and reversed economic growth prospects in a number of African countries at a time when foreign aid to the continent has been shrinking, the World Bank says. In a new report featuring key African social and economic data for the period 1990-99 released, the Bank […]

VIOLENCE has erupted in a second Johannesburg township as some 700 residents of Soweto set fire to local council offices, burnt a councillor’s car and smashed another, witnesses said. Firefighters summoned to the blaze had to withdraw as the crowd pelted them with stones. The violence flared at the end of a meeting called by […]

Neal Collins soccer Shaun Bartlett is the latest South African to face a major club versus country dispute following his Man of the Match performance for Charlton against Newcastle on Sunday. Bartlett, currently on loan from FC Zurich, scored one and made the other for Matthias Svensson at The Valley in a rousing 2-0 win. […]

Following a hearing before the Press Ombudsman in Johannesburg on February 5, the Mail & Guardian is required to publish the following: The Mail & Guardian published in its November 10 to 16 issue a report which accused the Hartbeespoort Local Council of hijacking the tourist town by setting up a private company, owned by […]

Staff allege that Thabo Ndabeni used the organisation to enrich himself Khadija Magardie The man insiders say is responsible for the collapse of the dispute resolution body the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (Imssa) is running his own consultancy The Grain of Wheat Consulting just a stone’s throw from where Imssa’s offices were. His […]

ONE of the four winners of GSM mobile phone licences in Nigeria has blocked the release of a $285m licence fee until authorities sort out a disputed frequency row. Communication Investment Ltd (CIL) said it had been assigned a frequency that is being disputed in court by Nigerian telecoms operator Motophone. The Commission said this […]

Mungo Soggot Trafigura, the London-based oil company embroiled in the bribe scandal, this week dismissed allegations that bribes had been paid to South African state oil officials as part of its deal with the state oil operation. Documents and affidavits filed in the Pretoria High Court say that, as part of a deal with Trafigura […]

While scientists say that there is no danger to the public from ships carrying nuclear waste, environmentalists are not convinced Fiona Macleod South Africa’s top nuclear scientists say the shipment of nuclear waste that passed by the Western Cape en route to Japan this week poses less of a threat to human health than smoking. […]

James Hall ‘Swazi Bank is a reverse Robin Hood, it steals from the poor, and gives to the rich,” says Amos Mhlanga*, a disgruntled farmer who unsuccessfully sought a loan from the national bank to plant cotton. The nation’s only indigenous bank, the Swaziland Development and Savings Bank, was set up in the 1970s by […]

MPUMALANGAS health department is seeking national funding to help prevent a repeat of last year’s malaria epidemic, which was the worst in 60 years. Officials said the department needed money for controversial poison DDT to fight the malaria-carrying mosquito, Anopheles Funestus, which transmits the disease all year round. DDT was banned in the US in […]

Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane Second Look A groundswell movement for people-centred social justice is generating a momentum that amounts to the left’s best hope for 30 years. It is a reinvention of the left that involves new formations in place of traditional communist parties and left-wing governments. And it draws on a network of […]

Barry Streek An NGO, Project Literacy, has been told that in terms of new regulations it will no longer qualify for state tenders because it is not a company with shareholders. Government tenders are awarded on a points system that favours ownership by previously disadvantaged groups, women and the disabled. The proposed qualifications will effectively […]

It is difficult to identify a beneficiary of this week’s forced removal from Alexandra, the densely populated, dirt-poor township that is surrounded by the villas of Johannesburg’s filthy rich. Yes, Alex’s population does need to be reduced to give any who remain behind the chance to have reasonably decent housing and services, and healthy lives. […]

SARAH BOSELEY, Johannesburg | Friday A CRITICAL battle is about to begin in the Pretoria High Court, where 42 pharmaceutical companies, including the British giant GlaxoSmithKline, are attempting to block the government from importing the cheap medicines its people so badly need to survive treatable diseases like diarrhoea, meningitis, Aids and TB. The drug companies […]

A century ago, a rising South African writer was languishing in a prisoner-of-war camp. Stephen Gray introduces his unique letters A hundred years ago, on a sweltering mountainside in Sri Lanka, some 5 000 transported Boer sol- ‘ diers, defeated largely in the Free State, were penned up behind barbed wire for the duration of […]

Console Tleane CROSSFIRE In his attempt to engage Sipho Seepe, Jack Mokobi shoots himself so mercilessly in the foot that one hopes there is some kind-hearted bureaucrat at Union Buildings who has provided him with bullet-proof socks. (“The media should give credit where it’s due”, February 9 to 15). Mokobi’s response to Seepe raises questions […]

Glenda Daniels Downsizing, rightsizing, cost-cutting, increased productivity, pruning dead wood. All of these terms, which strike terror into the hearts of employees, need not necessarily result in retrenchment. While workers are feeling more and more insecure and depressed by the South African economy, which is shedding thousands of jobs every month, for some change means […]

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has appointed singer Miriam Makeba, 58, who shot to worldwide fame in 1965 with “The Click Song”, as goodwill ambassador to Africa. Makeba spent 31 years in exile for her opposition to the apartheid regime but brought African music to the world. She started out singing “seditious” songs in Xhosa, Sotho and […]

In a move reminiscent of the apartheid era, residents of Alexandra township were this week subjected to forced removals. Report by Thuli Nhlapo. Photographs by Nadine Hutton This week more than 20 unemployed young boys and men were picked up on the streets of Wadeville in Benoni after being told that they would make extra […]

Gwen Ansell Police or the inquest court may tell us how pianist Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and his wife Flo Mthoba died on Tuesday. But, despite gossip and speculation, no one will be able to tell us why. Last time I spoke at length to him ironically, at the Alexandra funeral of bandleader Ntemi Piliso he […]

Steven Friedman Worm’s eye view Excited at the prospect of another session of Parliament? Me neither. The speaker and parliamentary media were last Friday predicting an important, lively session. They would, wouldn’t they? That is, after all, their job. The rest of us will be forgiven for assuming that it is far more likely that […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lusaka | Friday JOSEPH Kabila, the new leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has earned universal praise for the new spark he has given to efforts to revive the DRC peace process. Speakers at the DRC summit in Lusaka this week commended Kabila and expressed optimism that his pivotal role in […]

The core of the South African squad will probably come from the 14 players who did duty in the last two Tests against Sri Lanka, writes Peter Robinson If you were to choose just one cricketer to travel to the West Indies with South Africa at the end of this month on the basis of […]

whipping boy Horseracing crowds are dwindling. The Met a few weeks ago attracted an estimated 50 000, but if one in 10 of that bunch of social butterflies makes it to the track this weekend, the infrastructure would collapse under the strain. Hardcore punters have mixed feelings about big-race days. The Met and the July […]

Jaspreet Kindra African National Congress MPL Patricia Lion-Cachet and the former mayor of Kyalami, Isaac Mahlangu, are earning two salaries at the taxpayers’ expense. Lion-Cachet defected to the ANC from the Democratic Alliance before last December’s municipal elections. Both earn incomes as councillors and as members of the Gauteng Tourism Board. In terms of the […]

INTERNATIONALLY acclaimed South African jazz musician Moses Molelekwa, 28, and his wife have been found dead in his Johannesburg office. Pianist Molelekwa and Florence Mtoba, 35, were found by Mtoba’s brother. Molelekwa was found hanging from a beam and his wife’s body was on the floor. They leave behind a young son. Sources said Molelekwa […]

Justin Arenstein and Dumisane Lubisi Thirteen of South Africa’s largest pharmaceutical companies have frozen medical deliveries to Mpumalanga hospitals after blacklisting the provincial government for failing to pay accounts dating back to October 2000. The province tried to deny the crisis on Thursday after making small emergency payments to creditors on Wednesday night. The provincial […]