Staff Reporter

Mark Ouma soccer Improved physical conditioning and better team cohesion are keys to a better performance by Banyana Banyana in the Africa Women’s Football Championships next month. The two-week competition – which kicks off on November 11 in Johannesburg – features defending champions Nigeria, runners-up Ghana, Cameroon, Morocco, Runion, Uganda, Zimbabwe and hosts South Africa. […]

Greg Bowes CD OFTHEWEEK The mother city has its designation as a prime party destination confirmed with a scintillating set from Dave Seaman, simply called Cape Town(Global Underground). The mix, a cross-section of the tunes that wowed audiences here earlier this year, emerges all hazy and dubby but by track four – a Futureshock mix […]

When it comes to filling senior posts in the judiciary, a judge’s ability is no longer determined by the number of gray hairs on his head Khadija Magardie When the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the body tasked with appointing judges, met this week to interview its latest batch of candidates, its preoccupation with “transformation” appeared […]

The Gunners are through to the next round of the Uefa Champions League with a game to spare Neal Collins That’s more like it. Arsenal’s emphatic 4-2 win over Czech champs Sparta Prague on Wednesday will have the rest of Europe sweating – and boy, did the Brits need a result like that after the […]

David Le Page An extraordinary new vehicle with a unique power source is lined up for production in South Africa, offering hope for those incensed by the cost of hydrocarbons. The car, called the Taxi ZerO Pollution (TOP), runs off motive energy stored as compressed air in tanks resembling those of scuba divers. The compressed […]

The workers’ compensation system fails to protect those it claims to serve Paula Howell Khadija Magardie’s article “Workers’ fund crippled by ‘steady rot’” (October 13 to 19) was an accurate description of what is happening in workers’ compensation. There is, however, a more fundamental problem, which is whether the current system can adequately serve the […]

Peter Dickson The African National Congress and its ally, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), have split in the Eastern Cape ahead of the December 5 local government elections. Sanco’s provincial executive has resolved to back independent candidates in the elections, citing as its reason the ANC’s “delaying tactics” in finalising lists of local […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A principal at a North West middle school is facing the axe after he admitted to beating students for failing to contribute towards the salary of a teacher at the school. This follows a report in the Mail & Guardian last week in which LS Thwane, a headmaster at Montshioa Memorial […]

The collapse of LeisureNet has only highlighted problems that have long been characteristic of an image-driven industry David Le Page Hard-selling, quick fixes and steroids. That’s the eternal tale of the fitness industry, which encapsulates the recent downfall of LeisureNet, custodians through the Health & Racquet Club (H&RC) group to many of the nation’s less […]

After its first year of implementation, a project to prevent crime in schools is proving successful Khadija Magardie Two teenage boys dressed in school uniform clamber out of nearby bushes and walk almost casually into the quadrangle, which is full of pupils at break-time. One smiling boy is pulling up his trouser zipper. Soon after […]

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe may finally be on his way out as the opposition and the population turn against him Mercedes Sayagues As impeachment proceedings against President Robert Mugabe got under way this week, a major new opinion survey has found that a clear majority of Zimbabweans support the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Peter Dickson The Eastern Cape MEC for Health, Monwabisi Goqwana, has been quietly running a private ambulance services company linked to a string of hospitals in the province. Goqwana, who was appointed after the 1999 general elections, is a director of the company Pobedi Ambulance Services, which provides services to […]

Saturday’s Currie Cup final is likely to be a torrid affair, with no quarter asked or given Andy Colquhoun Most of us will never play in a Currie Cup final. And we probably have as much chance of properly comprehending the sound and fury of the rugby coalface as a cat has of riding a […]

Howard Barrell Presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana died on Thursday morning, as persistent suggestions in political circles that he had been suffering from Aids remained officially unconfirmed. The presidency skirted the nature of Mankahlana’s illness in its announcement of his death at midday on Thursday. Later, the communications department in the presidency, which Mankahlana had headed, […]

Glenda Daniels A SECOND LOOK I spent last weekend agonising about whether to vote in the local government elections. As a black South African, how can one not vote after so many people have made sacrifices, suffered enormous hardship and even died to make a democratic South Africa possible? From this point of view the […]

One of the more important themes to emerge from this week’s Judicial Service Commission hearings was the extent to which many judges are still failing to appreciate the importance of the 1994 Constitution. Having been steeped in Roman Dutch and English law for so long, they are still wary of a document that forces them […]

Thebe Mabanga investigates the pros and cons of immigration I am at the Il Pavignione, on the 10th floor of the Michelangelo hotel at Johannesburg’s property hotbed, Sandton. Excuse me for stating the obvious, but this place drips with opulence. Not just the credit-fuelled kind found a few floors below us at the Sandton City […]

Ten people were killed on the R66 route to Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal after a taxi driver allegedly overtook on a barrier line in rainy conditions and crashed head-on with an oncoming truck. Five men, including the taxi driver, and five women died instantly. Four other women were taken to hospital in a serious condition. The […]

innovations Handspring is taking its range of personal digital assistants (PDAs) upmarket with a pair of highly specified new models. Available from Handspring’s website now (www.handspring.com) and due in the stores in November are the company’s first colour PDA, the $449 Handspring Visor Prism, and its fastest model, the $299 Handspring Visor Platinum. The products […]

His body wracked by drugs, Diego Maradona would love to return home to a quiet life – but it will never happen Simon Kuper ‘It was as if we had beaten a country, more than just a football team,” writes Diego Maradona in his new autobiography. “Although we had said before the game that football […]

Gavin Foster paralympics An agreement signed during the 2000 Paralympics now drawing to a close in Sydney might finally bring about what most people mistakenly think already exists – the unification of the Olympic Games and the Paralympics. Just 16 athletes, most of them crippled World War II veterans, competed in the first disabled games […]

FIVE more people have died of the deadly Ebola virus in northern Uganda, bringing the death toll in the latest outbreak to 69. The total number of cases of known victims of the gruesome disease also rose by nine to 191. However, 73 people are known to have recovered from Ebola, a viral disease which […]

Peter Dickson ‘Pot holes for the next 186km” is the wicked promise of eco-tourism’s new Wild Coast warrior, one that offers an alternative trip to the young European backpackers who are beginning to discover the Transkei in droves. Openly marketed as The Marijuana Trail – the so- called Transkei Gold variety is regarded by imbibers […]

Matthew Engel in the city going crazy over a game of baseball If you wander around the cheapo art shops on Seventh or Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, you can probably still find a framed print of the famous old New Yorker cover which plays tricks with perspective to depict the world as seen from the […]

Mail & Guardian reporters The G7 industrialised nations intervened on behalf of the euro last month to test whether the clamour for United States assets, which has been boosting the dollar on the foreign exchanges, had been overdone, the Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Eddie George, said recently. Since the euro was launched, […]

PRODUCTS from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) trade bloc still find it difficult to penetrate the EU market despite an existing trade arrangement with African, Carribean and Pacific (ACP) nations, a Comesa official said this week. Erastus Mwencha, Comesa secretary general, urged Comesa members at a meeting of the ACP-EU Contonou […]

1970: The release of Cotton Comes to Harlem and Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song herald the start of the blaxploitation genre. 1971: Shaft is the first big-budget blaxploitation film. Isaac Hayes wins Oscar for the music. Shaft’s Big Score! and Shaft in Africa follow. 1972: Two of America’s biggest pop stars provide the soundtracks to […]

David Le Page The abundance of unscrupulous players in the fitness industry, and its failure to set about self-regulation, could make life a lot tougher for the new owners of the Health and Racquet Club (H&RC), whoever they may be. The Department of Trade and Industry has proposed regulations in terms of the Unfair Business […]

Eldene Eyssell and Elisabeth Lickindorf A Stellenbosch team has found a fast, accurate test for the fungus known as “black goo” which has been devastating the world’s vineyards. Slow to grow, the deadly fungus (Phaeomoniella chlamydospora) is difficult to detect in its early stages. Like cholesterol that blocks arteries in humans, the fungus attacks the […]

PRO-GOVERNMENT south Sudanese militia have razed three camps of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south-east, killing at least 53 rebels. The militia, identified as “Peace Forces,” destroyed equipment, killed 53 rebels and forced the remaining SPLA men to flee into the bush, the state-owned Al-Anbaa daily newspaper reported. The SPLA has […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION These last two Tuesdays have seen the broadcast of the awesome BBC production of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast on M-Net. The detail, the imagination and technical tour de force of this series is hard to praise sufficiently. It was received to rapturous critical acclaim in the United Kingdom and sets its own benchmark […]

Michael Berger Crossfire The Mail & Guardian editorial of October 20 to 26 sees the Middle East situation in terms of apartheid, and the Oslo peace accord as an unjust settlement, presumably even as an interim arrangement in an ongoing evolutionary process to finding accommodation for both Jews and Arabs in an inflammable region. This […]