Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday THOUSANDS of South African Communist Party (SACP) supporters have taken to the streets of South Africa’s major cities to demand easier access to bank loans for the country’s poor as part of its Red October campaign – and are threatening more action should the banks refuse. In Johannesburg some 5000 […]

Malawi police authorities have charged seven prison officiers with murder in the July death of an inmate. A police probe found the seven officers were liable for the death of businessman Kwacha Ghambi, who was murdered in a notorious prison in Zomba, the former colonial-style capital city. The victim was serving a three-year sentence for […]

SOUTH African police are seeking the masterminds behind a heist of 30 tonnes of unrefined platinum worth millions of rands after nine men were caught packing the granular platinum into maize meal bags on Johannesburg’s East Rand. The truck transporting the metal was hijacked during the week. Police found the truck using a satellite tracking […]

A NIGERIAN couple who smuggled two young Nigerian girls into the United States and held them in involuntary servitude in their home in the Bronx, New York has been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Prosper Emeka Udogwu and his wife, Ifeoma Ezeonu Udogwu, had been sentenced to 11 years and three months […]

SWIFT action to fight the Ebola outbreak in Uganda has resulted in a much lower mortality rate than earlier cases of the deadly virus, and raised hopes of a speedy drop-off in infections, health experts said. The hemorrhagic fever caused by the virus usually kills between 50 and 90% of the people it infects, but […]

David Beresford Another Country As a student I turned up at my favourite pub one evening to find myself banned from the premises for having danced on the tables the night before. I had not been there the night before and I had not danced on the tables (although I subsequently made a point of […]

Marianne Merten Taxi warlord turned local government candidate, Victor Sam, died this week the way he had lived – by the gun. But his death has left many wondering what hat Sam was wearing when he was gunned down in Crossroads in his car. The controversial taxi boss, township businessman and community figure was brought […]

John Matshikiza with the lid off My old friend Moji from exile days came running wildly up Rockey Street the other day and seemed relieved to see a friendly face. He sat down without even saying hello after all these years. He had a heavy situation on his mind. “I just paid R10 for a […]

Art aside, the touring Marc Chagall extravaganza is a defining moment in South Africa’s emergence from cultural isolation Kathryn Smith When a major Marc Chagall exhibition was announced at a rather lavish reception at Standard Bank headquarters earlier this year, my first impulsive thoughts were, why Chagall? If the French wanted to showcase their cultural […]

Economists are concerned that declining technology stocks will lead slowing economies into recession Donna Block in New York After 10 years of a bull market – which some thought would never quit – the bears have finally busted out and are mauling Wall Street. The question is: will the New Economy’s technology boom, which drove […]

David Le Page The rand was pummelled to fresh lows against the dollar and the pound this week, dropping below R7,70 to the dollar late on Wednesday amid increasing investor concern about Southern Africa and emerging markets in general. Ever since May, when the currency first began to tumble, economists have been overflowing with reassurances […]

David Le Page AFRICANFRONTIERS The downside is, South Africa is one of the world’s top 20 polluters. At least 93,5% of South African electricity is coal-fired. Eskom is the world’s single largest producer of carbon dioxide. Acid rain created by power stations causes fences near Bethel to disintegrate in just three years. The upside? Southern […]

lie’ Marten du Plessis crossfire Mail & Guardian reporter Belinda Beresford has had the rash impudence to suggest that noseweek (“a venerable organ”) has “maliciously distorted the facts” about Professor Malegapuru Makgoba’s presentation on Aids mortality to the Presidential Advisory Panel on Aids (“Lies, damned lies and noseweek”, October 6 to 12). Ja well, but […]

Two years after taking to the stage in his first one-man show, Marc Lottering is the most popular performer on Cape Town’s burgeoning stand-up comedyscene RyanFortune It’s an unseasonably cool Thursday evening in Cape Town, but On Broadway in Green Point is packed to capacity for Marc Lottering, the lank-limbed, bushy-haired comedian who seems unstoppable […]

South African banking groups are using the Internet to put a new spin on loyalty schemes and encourage online shopping David Le Page Banks want more business. Internet vendors want more business. Both want fewer hassles with online credit card transactions. These are the three major imperatives behind eBucks and bluebean.com, the new Internet initiatives […]

Humphrey Tyler crossfire South Africa is in serious danger of being sidetracked into a blind alley by the current “debate” on racism, quite apart from the fact that it is wasting a lot of money giving some people highly paid, totally useless jobs, maybe for life. Having kicked out the National Party because of its […]

poachers James Hall Swazis’ cultural antipathy toward snakes has prompted the Swaziland Senate to rally to the defence of three poachers who were arrested for killing a 3m-long python. Senator Simeon Simelane raised a motion last week calling for the minister of justice to release the suspects. Other senators in their submissions depicted the poachers […]

Belinda Beresford It may be a sunny Christmas this year, but it’s unlikely to be that cheery for retailers who rely on the shopping frenzy, aided by 13th cheques, to provide a hefty chunk of their annual sales. Brooding over the shoulders of shoppers will be the South African Reserve Bank, eager to ensure that […]

Barry Streek The government’s ability to deliver on its local government election promise of 6E000 litres of free water to poor people every month is being questioned by the Rural Development Services Network (RDSN). RDSN has been researching the provision of 50 litres a person a day for two years. It says: “About 40E000 children […]

Andy Capostagno golf If the fourth edition of the President’s Cup follows anything like the pattern of the last one, held in Australia in 1998, by the time you read this the international team captained by South Africa’s Ernie Els should already have wrapped it up. For it was in Melbourne two years ago that […]

Merryman Kunene soccer In South Africa, where football players are among the biggest role models for youngsters, it is gratifying to meet players or former stars like Mike Mangena, Marks Maponyane and Gary Bailey who, long after their playing days are over, are still able to sustain a superstar lifestyle. However, the more frequent reality […]

first Paul Kirk The University of Natal’s psychology department has helped produce a guidebook that teaches children how to cope when HIV/Aids wipes out their parents and leaves them in charge. As the Aids pandemic sweeps through South Africa large numbers of households may soon be headed up by children too young to even vote. […]

Chris McGreal The Nigerian government has banned a radical Yoruba organisation responsible for the murders of hundreds of people in Lagos in days of fighting between the country’s two largest ethnic groups. President Olusegun Obasanjo proscribed the widely supported Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) and ordered the arrest of its leadership and members amid another surge […]

Barry Streek The Democratic Alliance (DA)hit out this week at the government’s threat to consider expropriating farmland for redistribution, charging that Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza raised the issue as a smokescreen for the local government elections. “It is a complete lie to the say there is no farmland available,” says the […]

Booker Prize finalist Margaret Atwood can enter the mind of a murderer or a child bully with ease. She can convey human suffering like no one else. Her image is austere, yet her presence warm. Katharine Viner disentangles the woman from the writer Margaret Atwood would like to clear a few things up from the […]

An exhibition of portraits of Nelson Mandela questions the role that art plays in the construction of power Yvette Gresl Janet Wilson’s debut exhibition, Icon and Index, is an engrossing exploration of portraiture in post-apartheid South Africa. The subject of Wilson’s portraits is Nelson Mandela, unquestionably South Africa’s most ubiquitous political and cultural icon. I […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The screaming started at about 10am. “Suddenly it looked as if the whole township was at war. I put my money in my cash bag and stumbled outside; that’s when I realised that something was terribly wrong,” said Daniel Mohale, a hawker who trades in Diepkloof, Soweto. “Hundreds of security guards […]

Peter Robinson cricket Think of them as the rubber men: strangers from a faraway land who keep bouncing upright no matter how badly bent or twisted out of shape they might be. Oh, all right. That’s a bit over the top, but the distinguishing feature of Stephen Fleming’s New Zealand team as they trundle around […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi A group of former Afri- can National Congress-linked self-defence unit members and residents displaced by political violence in Thokoza on the East Rand in the early 1990s have formed a civic movement to oppose the ANC in the forthcoming local government elections. The new party, the Displacees Ratepayers’ Association (DRA), was formed two […]

Godfrey Mutisya Crossfire The United States of Africa is becoming a buzzword across the continent in a manner reminiscent of classical pan-Africanism. A significant number of academics, politicians, journalists and political activists seem convinced that the current political and economic conflicts, poverty and endemic crisis of democracy and governance are evidence that the post- colonial […]

A new book on the truth commission has exposed a bitter feud between some of the body’s top officials Jaspreet Kindra Two truth commissioners this week lashed out at Dr Alex Boraine, deputy chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for pillorying their contribution to the truth process. Hlengiwe Mkhize called Boraine a “psychopath”, while […]

A national sporting body’s reluctance to take action against a child molester has highlighted the vulnerability of disabled children Stefaans Brmmer T wo sports associations for the disabled kept on a senior executive, sentenced to 10 years in jail for sexually assaulting a 16- year-old Down’s Syndrome girl, giving him the opportunity to continue working […]