With South African property about the cheapest in the world, perhaps now is the time to stop being a tenant and think of becoming an owner Ian Fife Property insiders who say that it’s time to start investing in residential property are supported by a recent world survey by Knight Frank that shows South African […]
Judicial history was made when Sibusiso Radebe the alleged mastermind behind the Miracle 2000 pyramid scheme was granted R1m bail, the highest ever set by a South African court. Radebe was released on condition that he reports every day to the Midrand police station. He also may not leave the greater Johannesburg and Nelspruit areas. […]
Glenda Daniels A senior official of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has been dismissed for criticising the union’s handling of a strike amid claims by some of his colleagues that he was targeted for being too left wing. Dinga Sikwebu, who has been nominated for the post of general secretary, was […]
Clare Boylan Body Language When asked what age a woman ceases to feel the torments of the flesh the Princess Metter-nich replied: “I do not know. I am only 65.” Last week Marj Thoburn, a 60-year-old marriage guidance consultant, rocked a youth-obsessed boat by stating at a conference that people over 50 were more likely […]
The summits have turned into expensive media fests that don’t deliver very much Larry Elliot The good news for United States President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the other G8 leaders is that Okinawa was no Seattle. Holding their annual shindig on a tropical island, converted for a couple of days into […]
Andy Colquhoun in Parramatta RUGBY Reporting on the Springboks occasionally puts one in mind of what it may have been like tramping in the wake of Caesar’s army as it marched into Germania each summer to campaign against the Visigoths (the author and proprietors of the Mail & Guardian in no way vouch for the […]
OPPOSITION parties slammed Mpumalanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu on Thursday for allowing provincial director general Coleman Nyathi to resign instead of firing him on corruption charges. Nyathi resigned voluntarily but unexpectedly on Thursday morning, citing “personal problems” surrounding his citizenship. Both Home Affairs and the police Aliens Control Unit are currently investigating indications that Nyathi and […]
July 20 is the 75th anniversary of his birth. Richard Pithouse reflects, from Durban, on the unusually heroic life of a brilliant intellectual When McDonald’s opened their first branch in Durban a local business columnist read the landing of the empty smile and iconic arches in Old Fort Road as an advance blessing from the […]
A new report uncovers a secret SADF project to ‘cure’ homosexuals by giving them sex changes Paul Kirk Sex-change operations, medical torture and chemical castration were perpetrated on national servicemen in a bizarre programme to cure “deviants” during the apartheid era. To this day dozens of victims of the programme are crippled and disfigured, stranded […]
Kirk The victims of the South African Defence Force’s (SADF) weirdest experiment – biological, chemical and psychological warfare on conscripts – are many and varied. Few, however, are keen to go public with their stories. For years dark rumours circulated about how badly homosexuals were treated by the SADF and at least once the army […]
Khadija Magardie BEYOND RIGHTS TALK AND CULTURE TALK: COMPARATIVE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS AND CULTURE edited by Mahmood Mamdani (David Philip) The politics of rights and culture revolves around a specific question – can a culture of individual rights coexist with the right of every individual to practice one’s culture? The essays in […]
SOUTH African magnet maker Tridelta Magnet Technology Holdings has been placed into provisional liquidation with the listing of its ordinary shares suspended, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Tridelta’s share was last quoted down 40 percent at three cents. It went into free-fall on July 19, when the company issued a cautionary notice saying that it was […]
Edward de Bono is a leading authority on communication. So why is he so bad at conversation? Emma Brockes Edward de Bono, inventor of lateral thinking and a man who regards himself as a more powerful visionary than Plato, is outlining his plans for our interview. We are in his ground-floor flat in Albany, the […]
Iden Wetherell President Robert Mugabe can be forgiven for feeling rather besieged this week. He is on the receiving end of importunate members of Parliament reminding him of their sterling work on the electoral front and promises made of preferment. He is deeply hurt by the lyrics of songs belted out by opposition supporters at […]
David Macfarlane A second look A woman lies on her back in a chilly-blue hospital examination room. Her stomach, genitals and legs are bare; her knees are raised and apart. Her facial expression is resigned, vulnerable – yet somehow in control. Eight or nine white-coated medical interns surround her, and one by one pull on […]
slopes Monica Graaff Obituary To those who don’t climb – and I am one of them – the question “why” always comes up. Why risk your life unnecessarily? Why choose the most difficult route up a mountain when you could stroll up the back? Why? To Duncan Elliott, the 35-year-old South African alpinist who died […]
THE Pietermaritzburg Regional Court has dismissed a high profile rape case against Johannesburg tycoon Jonty Sandler, who had been accused of raping a security guard at gunpoint in a Drakensburg hotel. Magistrate Fred de Beer threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence presented against Sandler in court this week boiled down to […]
Personal details Full names: Nicholas Coppola Birth date: January 7, 1964 Place of birth: Long Beach, California, USA First name: Nicolas Present surname: Cage Family: Francis Ford Coppola (director, uncle); Talia Shire (actor, aunt). Marriage: Patricia Arquette Children: Weston (by ex-girlfriend Kristina Fulton). Career: Training: Passed the G.E.D. and left Beverly Hills High School a […]
Personal details Full names: Angelina Jolie Voight Birth date: June 04, 1975 Place of birth: Los Angeles, California First name: Angelina Family: Father: Jon Voight, actor; separated from Jolie’s mother 1976 Mother: Marcheline Bertrand, former actress; born 1950; part Iroquois Indian Brother: James Haven Voight, director; born 1973; studied filmmaking at University of Southern California; […]
THE Justice Department is investigating claims that the police “untouchable” unit, the Scorpions spent hundreds of thousands of rands on luxury homes and office space without authorization. A local newspaper reported that Scorpions chief Frank Dutton and the deputy prosecutions head Percy Sonn, were being investigated for buying luxury homes and furnishing them with public […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 09.30am. IRON and steel giant, Iscor, denied that it was fighting off a hostile takeover of all or any of its assets, despite media speculation to the contrary. The company has not been approached by a predator seeking to take over the metals and minerals producer or any […]
INVESTIGATORS are focusing their attention on the port engine of the doomed French Concorde, after it was revealed that the pilot reported engine failure shortly before the crash. French deputy public prosecutor, Elisabeth Senot, who is leading a judicial investigation into the crash, said that experts had made a transcript from the cockpit voice recorder […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Abuja | Tuesday 09.00am. NIGERIA is to boost its electricity supply by some 450 megawatts in a deal with one of the Italian oil and gas majors already operational in the country. In a Memorandum of Understanding between Agip and the Nigerian government, the Italian oil giant will build and operate a power […]
THE former Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla) commander who ordered the killing of three people in Eikenhof, Gauteng in 1993, regarded children as legitimate targets. This emerged during Apla commander Phila Dolo’s testimony during his amnesty bid at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week. Zandra Mitchley, 38, Shaun Nel, 14, and his friend Claire […]
INVESTIGATORS are sifting through the wreckage of the Air France Concorde to determine what started the fire that caused it to crash moments after takeoff killing 109 people on board and four on the ground. This is the first major accident since the supersonic craft was first launched 31 years ago. The French ministry of […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00am. MINISTER of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin says South Africa will not let itself be bullied into accepting the controversial wine and spirits agreement with the European Union, which again hangs in the balance in spite of a final agreement reached last month. One of the agreement’s contentious issues […]
A PRIEST has implicated former South African National Defence Force Minister, Joe Modise, in the killing and torturing of former ANC members. Rustenburg priest Tlhomedi Mfalapitsa, testifying during a Truth Commission hearing in Pretoria, accused Modise of ordering the deaths of several people and said that in one instance Modise had personally tortured an ANC […]
AROUND 20 people were injured, including two policemen, in clashes between African Christians and Egyptian Muslims after a car hit a Christian outside a church. Violence errupted and eventually hundreds of riot police were called in to restore order. The man hit by the car was given first aid on the scene while Sudanese and […]
ZIMBABWE said it intends to introduce health quarantines in the country’s prisons to curb the spread of communicable diseases among inmates. Under the plan, existing prison laws will be amended to provide for compulsory medical tests for all convicts, and give the prison service legal powers to confine inmates suffering from such diseases. Prison officials […]
SOUTH Africa is facing an intensifying drug abuse crisis which sees about half the patients requiring specialist treatment in Gauteng reporting cannabis and/or Mandrax as their primary drug of abuse, according to a report by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Of more concern, says the report, is an increasing shift by mandrax-users to harder drugs […]
THE Rwandan government has demanded the immediate return of 41 orphans flown to Italy by non-governmental organisation during the 1994 genocide. According to a senior Rwandan official, only 81 out of the 122 orphans had so far been returned from Italy. Rwanda’s justice minister, Jean de Dieu Muco, said in Kigali that the parents or […]
RATS could soon be the next weapon in the fight to detect land mines. A Tanzanian local newspaper reported that a project, a joint enterprise between Sokoine University of Agriculture and a Belgian NGO, is underway to train African giant pouch rats to identify the presence of land mines by smell. The rodents are to […]