He is one of the greats of 20th century music, but his career has soared and dipped, as has his personal life, encompassing political protest, religious conversion and rumours of secret marriages. Adam Sweeting on a ‘Byronic hero’ who, in his 60th year, is surprised to find himself winning over a new generation It would […]
David Le Page african frontiers It’s all about detective work, says one of the astronomers involved in the building of the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt). As they labour on a Karoo mountain top building Salt over the next five years, South Africa’s intergalactic Hercule Poirots know they are essentially building a great big magnifying […]
Barry Streek A controversial proposal by the board of the SABC to refer senior appointments to the Cabinet for approval is likely to be challenged in Parliament. Chair of the SABC board Vincent Maphai told the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on communications in Parliament this week that the appointment of three senior executives, including its […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Iden Wetherell When Zimbabwe concluded its bloody election campaign in June the country heaved a sigh of relief as a return to normality beckoned. With more than 30 dead and thousands beaten and displaced in the ruling Zanu-PF party’s campaign of rural terror, it was hoped the country would at last find some peace. That […]
Bolstered by President Thabo Mbeki’s prevarication, the Aids dissidents’ arguments are fuelling confusion in South Africa – but they have little scientific merit Belinda Beresford HIV does not exist. If it does exist it does not cause Aids. The disease Aids does not exist. There is no epidemic nor are there deaths. There is just […]
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 […]
innovations You know what you want. So just asking for it could be a lot simpler than having to go out, scour an auction website like ebay.com and then bid on it. M-Web has introduced an interesting twist on the now-familiar auction site in the form of iWant. You post your desire and sellers then […]
Paul Kirk Amid growing complaints about unchecked air pollution, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa has vowed to crack down on one of the country’s worst offenders – Eskom – as part of wide-ranging plans to combat the problem. Moosa said: “It would be unfair for us to crack down on industry […]
THE World Bank has placed Zimbabwe on non-payment status, noting that the country was behind on the payment of $47m. The bank said the principal amount outstanding on loans to Zimbabwe from the bank’s main lending arm totalled $452m, with overdue payments worth $45m. The bank’s concessional lending unit, the International Development Association, had made […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Port Elizabeth | Thursday THOUGHTLESS government policies are driving South Africa’s farmers to bankruptcy, outgoing Agri SA president Chris du Toit has warned, pleading with government to “just leave us alone.” Opening the annual congress of the farmers’ organisation, Du Toit said agriculture was seen as an endless source of wealth. […]
DENMARK’S Appeals Court has upheld an earlier ruling to extradite a former Rwandan army officer to the UN war crimes tribunal in Tanzania, court officials in the western town of Viborg said. Innocent Sagahatu is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on charges of participating in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as […]
ITALY has pledged to cancel up to $116m Uganda owes to creditors in the Paris Club of donor nations, Italian ambassador to Uganda Luigi Napolitano said. The debt represented over 80% of the total Uganda owes to the club. Uganda’s total foreign debt runs at close to $4bn. But Napolitano said that for the country […]
GRACA Machel, former first lady of both Mozambique and South Africa, opens a 400-strong Global Summit of Women in Johannesburg on Thursday which will concentrate on economic issues. The three-day conference, being held in Africa for the first time, will include an economic profile of the African woman, issues surrounding e-commerce and e-business, infrastructure as […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Thursday THE South African government is “spitting in the face” of people who were oppressed, impoverished and tortured by the apartheid regime by not paying them promised reparations. Speaking at a two-day conference in Cape Town called “The Unfinished Business of the TRC”, Judge Dumisa Ntsebeza, a former Truth and […]
THE Namibian Minerals Corporation (NAMCO) has launched a project to comb the ocean floor for new underwater diamond deposits. NAMCO, Africa’s second largest diamond producer, says the latest survey technology and three-dimensional images of the ocean floor enabled geologists to identify 163 areas with diamond potential, it said. Namibia’s underwater diamonds, which experts say are […]
AN Angolan police officer has shot an 80-year-old fisherman 30 times after the man refused to give the officer some bananas, the state-run Jornal de Angola reported. Joao Lando had just taken a load of bananas out of his canoe on the Angolan side of the Congo River, when Domingos Chiloia stopped him and asked […]
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has held talks with his Senegalese counterpart Abdoulaye Wade on peace and stability in west Africa, particularly in Ivory coast. Mbeki and Wade were part of an OAU delegation to go to the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, to attempt to defuse widespread tension in Ivory Coast ahead of general elections due […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Wednesday MPUMALANGA is sitting on a race war time bomb where farm labourers still live like slaves, are denied basic health care and are treated worse than mechanical implements such as tractors, the leading political parties in the province have warned. The situation is so bad in some areas that racial […]
A DIVING safari company has hunted and killed a suspected man-eating shark off Dar es Salaam’s main beach in Tanzania after it allegedly ate five people. The pregnant 400kg shark, believed to be responsible for the death of a 28-year-old student last week, was killed after “a hell of pursuit” off the popular Coco Beach. […]
SOWETO councillor Trevor Ngwane will protest against globalisation in the US and Canada later this month when he speaks in the Challenging Globalisation at Grassroots campaign. The month-long campaign is being driven by Global-South, a movement against corporate globalisation, and aims to generate solidarity for social justice movements in South Africa and Bolivia. The tour […]