Staff Reporter

BRYAN PEARSON, Port Elizabeth | Tuesday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki’s refusal to provide anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women is tantamount to sanctioning genocide of babies, an exasperated public health doctor has claimed. The view is growing, Costa Gazi said, that Mbeki and his government would rather babies of HIV-positive mothers are born infected with […]

JOHN GROBLER, Windhoek | Saturday THE United States’ new African Growth and Opportunities Act is expected to generate some controversy at a southern African economic summit in Windhoek next week. Many of the countries in the region have been excluded by the terms of the new law, say the organisers of the Southern Africa Trade […]

AMID thinly-veiled threats against South Africa’s judiciary, beleaguered Muslim vigilante group Pagad has vowed to continue to pursue its goals even if it is banned under the government’s proposed anti-terrorism legislation and has to meet “in the dark of night”. Addressing several hundred supporters at a meeting in Lavender Hill, the organisation’s legal co-ordinator Cassiem […]

SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has attacked the ruling junta in Ivory Coast, saying the world cannot stand by and condone the “fruits of tyranny”. “It … cannot and will not be that, when armed soldiers rob the people of their freedom, the rest of us maintain a treacherous silence,” Mbeki said in an address […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has launched the African National Congress’ (ANC) local election campaign with a pledge that free basic services will be provided to the poor – but first faces a potential showdown with traditional leaders threatening to derail the elections. Mbeki unveiled his party’s manifesto to a subdued crowd […]

REUTERS, Jerusalem | Monday INTERNATIONAL efforts to end bloodshed in the Middle East have redoubled, but tension remains high as an Israeli deadline nears for Palestinians to halt their wave of protests which has seen at least 84 people – mostly Palestinians – killed in 11 days of bloodshed. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was on […]

AFP, Harare | Monday CONFLICT is simmering in Zimbabwe between the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the government over threats to arrest MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai for allegedly treasonous statements. The MDC said the intended arrest was “legally unjustified and politically unwise and dangerous”, as it is likely to lead to unnecessary […]

PHILLIP NKOSI, Nelspruit | Monday A RISING star in Mpumalanga’s ANC ranks has been banned from the swish Emnotweni Casino in Nelspruit for two years after he was caught having sex in the toilets. Sipho Monareng, a member of the ANC constituency in Hazyview, was caught with his pants down by a security guard in […]

AT least 10 soldiers and 80 rebels were killed last week in fighting near the Burundi capital Bujumbura, state radio reported. Heavy fighting broke out last week between ex-FAR (Rwandan Armed Forces) and Interahamwe (Hutu militiamen who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda alongside the FAR), lasting more than two days and claiming “losses […]

SOME 52 Rwandan soldiers were killed by pro-government forces in the far east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the presidential press service said. The Popular Self-Defense Forces (FAP), attached to the government army, includes members of the Mai-Mai, a group of traditional warriors in the area who have taken several towns in recent […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday PROVINCIAL and Local Affairs Minister Sydney Mufamadi has postponed the announcement of the date of South Africa’s local government elections for the second time in a week after an impassioned plea by traditional leaders. Mufamadi admits the government does not see the need to postpone the elections – “as this […]

A COMMISSION to investigate human rights abuses in Nigeria dating back to the country’s civil war will start public hearings on October 23. The panel has spent a year sifting through thousands of petitions detailing alleged human rights abuses. Among the cases put to the commission are the extrajudicial killings of prominent opposition leaders under […]

GRACA Machel, former first lady of both Mozambique and South Africa, has urged more than 400 women business, political and academic leaders from 40 countries attending a global summit in Johannesburg not to forget to humanise their “struggle for empowerment.” Machel told the delegates: “You compete, but you compete always with a social agenda. That’s […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday THE rape of girls under the age of 15 has doubled in the past 10 years – and one-third of the rapists are school teachers, according to the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) latest survey on the extent of sexual violence against girls in South Africa. The Education Ministry’s Bheki […]

AT least 21 people were killed and more than 50 injured in clashes between gemstone miners and traders at a mine in northern Tanzania. Quoting police, the independent Guardian newspaper said the clashes broke out at Mererani mine near Arusha when some traders seized gemstones from a miner, who was reportedly beaten up and slashed […]

AFP, Port Elizabeth | Saturday RACIAL biases and divisions within South Africa’s research community are hampering the country’s battle against Aids, say speakers at a conference examining the demographic impact of the disease. “The research community is predominantly white, the government is predominantly black,” University of Stellenbosch professor Simon Bekker told delegates. “This may cause […]

EMSIE FERREIRA AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday THE leader of the Muslim vigilante group Pagad has been charged with terrorism for allegedly orchestrating a spate of bombings in outlying areas of Cape Town in 1997 and 1998. State prosecutor Willie Viljoen said Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim stands accused of ordering fellow members of Pagad to […]

AFP, Geneva | Saturday THE war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is heading for a humanitarian catastrophe, the World Food Program (WFP) has warned. Some 16 million people, or about one-third of the population, do not have enough to eat. “Thousands of lives are at stake,” said WFP’s Geneva spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume, adding that humanitarian […]

Jaspreet Kindra A deal to allow traditional authorities to function as parallel local councils was being hammered out this week in an effort to break the deadlock between traditional leaders and the government threatening to postpone the local government elections. The discussion of the plan suggests the African National Congress has backed down from its […]

Glenda Daniels The tardiness of employers in registering and paying their skills development levy to get training going is behind their inability to meet affirmative action targets. While more than R100-million a month is rolling in to the South African Revenue Service (Sars), which gives the money to the Department of Labour for training and […]

Before you can conquer new territory, you need to know where you are going Leon Forde Creating an accurate map of infinite, abstract cyberspace is not the easiest task for cartographers. Cyberspace, of course, does not exist. It is, to paraphrase novelist William Gibson, a consensual hallucination of space and surface – our brains perceive […]

Durban’s Ocean View place of safety faces allegations of rape, assault and child abuse Paul Kirk Police are investigating six cases of sexual assault and several instances of child abuse and neglect at a place of safety in Durban. One of the sexually motivated assaults, a rape, occurred during a supervised visit to the beach. […]

Fiona Macleod Vervet monkeys who have been terrifying staff and patients at the Ga-Rankuwa hospital near Pretoria have become part of an ambitious pilot project to save the species in South Africa. Volunteers at the Vervet Monkey Foundation trapped the Ga-Rankuwa troop of 15 this week and moved them to cages in a Johannesburg suburb. […]

Thuli Nhlapo The director of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), South Africa’s top labour body, has been called to explain her remote German ancestry before a commission of inquiry following allegations of racism by disgruntled staff members. The bizarre decision to call the director, Thandi Orleyn, to testify about her ancestry was […]

Steven Friedman worm’s eye view Do we need judges to do what elected politicians cannot? If a Constitutional Court case decided this week is a guide, the short answer is “yes”. The court this week ruled on the fate of people living on a Western Cape sports field who were spared eviction when High Court […]

Stewart Hennessey Body Language >From Samuel Richardson’s instructive novel for young women, Clarissa (1747), to What a Young Woman Ought to Know (hot in the early 1900s), to the modern dating bible, The Rules, all the oh-so-earnest advice being dispensed to young women can be distilled into one dull command: don’t put out. This is […]

PAUL KIRK, Johannesburg | Friday POLICE are investigating six cases of sexual assault and several instances of child abuse and neglect at a state-sponsored place of safety – a refuge for abandoned children – in Durban. A member of the public, Kobus Swart, says orphans, crippled children and welfare cases were being kept in the […]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez used last week’s oil summit to demand justice from industrialised nations Charlotte Denny and Alex Bellos in Caracas Opec blamed the tax systems of rich countries for high oil prices last week as they rallied to the call by the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, to politicise the oil producers’ cartel as […]

Mail & Guardian reporter A virus thousands of times narrower than a human hair has been shown to have an armoured coat organised like the chain mail of medieval knights. It probably protects the DNA of bacteriophage hk97, a virus that affects only bacteria, just as chain mail deflected arrows while allowing movement. Researchers report […]

HOWARD BARRELL, Cape Town | Friday PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki believes the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is part of a conspiracy to promote the view that HIV causes Aids. Mbeki also thinks that the CIA is working covertly alongside the big US pharmaceutical manufacturers to undermine him because, by questioning the link between HIV […]

balance Julian Borger Online music company Napster received a stay of execution this week when a United States appeal court allowed it to continue business until a final verdict on its future had been reached. The company, which allows its 32-million users to download music without charge, is being sued for copyright infringement by the […]

The explosion of Israeli-Palestinian violence over the past few days is, in the strange manner of such negotiations, a product of the fact that a final peace agreement is tantalisingly close and thus at its most vulnerable point. The two sides have been grappling over “final status” issues; the signs are there that they were […]