Staff Reporter

BRONWEN ROBERTS, Midrand | Friday IN its latest public disagreement with government, powerful labour federation Cosatu has threatened to launch a general nationwide strike if the government goes ahead with key changes to labour laws. The 1.8-million-member federation drew up a programme of action to fight the changes, which it says would undermine workers’ gains […]

African Frontiers is a new Mail & Guardian series highlighting science and technology in Africa. We’ll celebrate the talents of African pioneers across a multitude of disciplines, and attempt to capture the joy of discovery as much as the challenge of resolving practical problems on our continent Belinda Beresford african frontiers When all around them […]

Everybody agrees it was the greatest Games ever – and it is unlikely to happen again Matthew Engel Like lovers forced to part, the Olympic movement and Sydney shared one long, lingering embrace on Sunday night before saying farewell. This has only been a 16- day romance, but it has been a peculiarly intense one. […]

PETER DICKSON, Port Elizabeth | Friday HIV causes Aids – but death in most cases is from depression. That’s the opinion of Eastern Cape MEC for Health Dr Bevan Goqwana, who also believes circumcision and single-sex boarding schools to be at the cutting edge of prevention. Goqwana went public on his beliefs in Umtata last […]

Andy Colquhoun rugby Underdogs in sport have always clung to truisms. They have sworn that it is only “11 against 11”. They have dismissed precedent by pointing out “sport is played on the field not on team-sheets”. And (my favourite) they have talked down the opposition by pointing out “they only have two arms and […]

Johnny Masilela Literary people are divided as to whether the Congress of South .African Writers (Cosaw) should be revived or not. The organisation was founded in 1987 and brought out a spate of important publications, often by young black writers, in the late Eighties and early Nineties, but faded into insignificance in recent years, amid […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Paris | Friday THE son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has admitted that Tripoli paid $6m to Muslim rebels on the Philippine island of Jolo to secure the release of South Africans Callie and Monique Strydom and eight European hostages in late August. Seif al-Islam, who was a key figure in […]

Douglas Adams’s first novel was was an instant bestseller. Now dogged by writer’s block, he has turned to new projects Nicholas Wroe Soon after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published in 1979, Douglas Adams was invited to sign copies at a small science fiction bookshop in London’s Soho. As he drove there, some […]

One-hundred-and-forty Friday readers can each win a free double ticket to a sneak preview of Jesus’ Son on Wednesday September 27 at 8pm at Cinema Nouveau Rosebank and Cinema Nouveau Cavendish. All you have to do is present this page at the box office of the cinemas mentioned above, from 2pm on Saturday September 23, […]

Ntuthuko Maphumulo South Africa will be hosting the African Nations Women’s Cup finals on November 11 to 25, with games being played at Makhulong in Tembisa and Orlando stadium in Soweto. The tournament was first scheduled for October 14 to 28, but was changed by the South African Football Association (Safa) due to those dates’ […]

Merle Colborne Little evening bags and small binoculars. Tickly throats and Black Magic. And then the final fling, piping “Encore! Encore!” and pounding one’s feet on the floor and even perhaps doing a spot of standing up. Natal was awfully English going to the opera. Now opera audiences in KwaZulu-Natal rise from their seats whenever […]

Brenda Atkinson Bloodlines by Elleke Boehmer (David Philip) There is a powerful and telling moment in Elleke Boehmer’s new novel, Bloodlines, where her twentysomething white protagonist, Anthea Hardy, regards the coloured woman sitting next to her in her car: “Dora’s race is vividly visible, indelible, and Anthea wants to see it, confront it … Confront […]

We’ve got the shocking stories to make a mother lode of cop dramas, Charl Blignaut discovered at a recent TV scriptwriting workshop It’s his third day in town and David Simons is still trying to get a handle on the newspaper headlines. “I look at your papers and see your crime stories …” says the […]

Shirley Kossick The judges in Exclusive Books’s promotional “Boeke Prize” which highlights six novels, have come up with a really strong shortlist this year. It includes Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True (Phoenix), which topped the American bestseller lists in 1998. This gripping story of identical twins is told by Dominick, whose whole […]

Women’s boxing is big business in the United States, and Michelle Carson is looking for a piece of the action Gavin Foster Former South African kick-boxing champion Michelle Carson is the first South African woman to hold a professional boxing licence, and once the sport’s been legalised – probably at the end of this month […]

Andrew McUtchen She’s Benin’s only, and therefore, most successful afro-funk diva ever, an enthusiastic disciple of the Voodoo religion, and she’s not half determined to re-write the lyrics to James Brown’s evergreen soul classic It’s a Man’s World. Why? “Because it’s not. Men pretend to rule the world, but we do”. Meet the co-headline act […]

Kenya is in the grip of a drought, but there are runs aplenty at the Nairobi Gymkhana Club Peter Robinson in Nairobi Kenya’s minister for the environment let his view on law and order be known this week. He reckons criminals, even those merely under suspicion, should be taken out and lynched publicly. Put that […]

Economist Ian Palmer looks at which countries actually did best at the Olympics – adjusting for size and wealth While the performance of the United States and others at the top of the Olympics medals table looks impressive, the US clearly has two major advantages: it is a big and rich country. If adjustments are […]

Simon Kuper For reasons too complex to explain, I have just spent a few weeks in Ghana. It proved an excellent place to watch two other West African countries, Cameroon and Nigeria, reach the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament, with Cameroon going on to win the event on a penalty shoot-out against Spain. Most Ghanaians […]

A permanent exhibition at Pretoria University is giving the public access to remains of this ancient civilisation Catarina Weinek The University of Pretoria is custodian of some of South Africa’s greatest cultural objects: the collection of items excavated since 1934 from the archaeological sites, Mapungubwe and K2, on a farm named Greefswald on the border […]

been Neal Collins After the dazzling closing ceremony, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph said goodbye in 38 languages, including Zulu and Afrikaans. Which got me thinking. What if we were saying salani kahle Sydney 2000, sawubona Cape Town 2004? It makes you think what a Games like this could have done for the rainbow nation, had Cape […]

Andrew Muchineripi soccer It has not been the greatest of years for Southern Africa countries when it came to bidding for football tournaments, with South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe experiencing the pain of rejection. The most bitter blow came in July when Germany pipped South Africa 12-11 in controversial circumstances for the right to […]

She’s been the queen of pop for the best part of 20 years. Without her, there would be no Britney Spears or Posh Spice. But why is Madonna, at 42, still churning out records? Julie Burchill First there’s that modish whining noise, like Eeyore having swallowed a synthesiser. Then the lumpen beat that affectionately passes […]

Thebe Mabanga In your ear One of the most interesting features of the South African community radio sector is the campus radio circuit. What began as nothing more than a cafeteria intercom as far back as the 1970s around South African tertiary institutions has now grown into an influential, dynamic force. The benefits of campus […]

RankCountryGold Gold equivGold equiv equivper millionper million people GNP adjust NoRankNoRankNo 1Bahamas1.7545.5716.37 2Bulgaria10.0171.2573.59 3Jamaica3.7321.2282.81 4Estonia1.7551.6652.25 5Cuba20.781.8832.08 6Romania18.0110.78201.92 7Latvia2.0461.00121.69 8Belarus8.6190.86171.59 9Azerbaijan2.3410.29371.47 10Hungary13.0131.3061.44 11Georgia2.0530.40311.41 12Ethiopia5.7270.09551.39 13Lithuania3.0380.75211.34 14Barbados0.3711.10101.26 15Moldova1.0590.25411.21 16Trinidad/Tobago1.0591.00121.14 17Kenya4.7290.17491.14 18Kazakstan5.7260.36330.91 19Mozambique1.0590.05640.89 20Slovakia3.3330.67220.84 21Armenia0.7680.17500.81 22Ukraine13.0140.26390.79 23Australia38.442.0220.76 24Slovenia2.0461.00120.64 25Russia60.020.41290.63 26Czech Rep5.0280.50250.50 27Quatar0.3710.55240.45 28Iceland0.3711.10100.45 29Greece9.0180.82180.45 30Norway7.0221.7540.45 Selected 60South Africa2.3410.06620.08 61United States66.610.25420.07

This year’s Smirnoff International Fashion Awards featured a return to design basics Charl Blignaut I was a touch anxious as I settled into my seat for the South African leg of the annual Smirnoff International Fashion Awards at Vodaworld in Midrand last Friday night. It wasn’t the over-abundance of ruthless Pretoria kugels or the Afrikaans […]

The first week of the Olympics has thrown up some pleasant surprises to counter the disappointments Grant Shimmin As I looked down from the media centre overlooking the Sydney International Aquatic Centre’s warm-up pool early on Wednesday evening, Graham Hill walked by, clad in his South African shirt and with a tattoo of the national […]

Thebe Mabanga in your ear I recently had the opportunity to listen to scenario planner Wolfgang Grukel give a talk on his book, Ten lessons from the future. Grukel paints an interesting picture of what life will be like in 2020. When one thinks of radio in its capacity as the country’s most accessible medium, […]

Andrew Muchineripi soccer Let us get one fact straight at the outset: the absence of stars like Zinedine Zidane will not weaken the French assault on South Africa at Ellis Park come Saturday evening. No, I have not been smoking anything stronger than the tobacco my second mother, the minister of health, is trying so […]

Harry Pearson On Saturday I met a man from Ashington who recently moved to Portobello in Edinburgh. He said the first week he was up in Scotland, he was chatting to a local woman he’d met at his running club. By way of introducing him to the area she listed the many celebrities who come […]

THE Nigerian government has approved a $10bn development plan for the state-run telecoms company NITEL, casting doubt on its place in the country’s slow moving privatisation programme. Communications Minister Mohammed Arzika said NITEL would be asked to provide 625.9bn naira over four years in internally-generated revenue for investment and find an additional 500bn naira from […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe spent more than US $500000 (R3,5m) of his struggling country’s cash by taking a delegation of 47, including his wife and three children, on a trip to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, according to reports. Quoting from official correspondence the […]