PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Parks Mankahlana has reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with the disgruntled mother of one of his two alleged children. His attorney, Moroampholo Tsoka, said on Monday that EC Wallace had promised to withdrawn her Nelspruit Maintenance Court suit after Mankahlana agreed to increase his R300 per month contribution towards their child. Mankahlana would […]
THE 19-year-old son of a Lynnwood Glen, Pretoria, couple charged with the murder of his parents and brother, was on Monday referred for 30 days psychiatric observation at the Weskoppies hospital by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court. Karl Gustav Greyvenstein was not asked to plead when he appeared briefly before Magistrate C Khoza. He will appear […]
THE expected big influx of additional crude supplies from Saudi Arabia and other leading producers pushed prices down some 8% in the last two days. Intermediate crude for August delivery fell 68 cents to US$ 29.99 a barrel and a major plunge in price is expected early next week if the Saudis do raise daily […]
THE UN Security Council has approved a resolution banning trade in diamonds mined from rebel-held areas of Sierra Leone. Diamonds are the main source of revenue for the Revolutionary United Front, which had taken 500 UN peacekeepers hostage in May. Resolution 1306, proposed by Britain, passed with 14 votes and one abstention from Mali. Exempted […]
HIV mutates very readily, which means it can rapidly become resistant to drugs, so patients need to be treated with a cocktail of medicines Belinda Beresford People almost never die of HIV, they die from any number of a wide selection of diseases which overwhelm immune systems ravaged by the virus. Thousands of different mutants […]
Matlou, Connie Selebogo, Barry Streek and Evidence wa ka Ngobeni After having tracked down the whereabouts of prominent apartheid torturers enjoying life after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the Mail & Guardian went in search of the former regime’s quislings. They were apartheid’s puppets – the people who ran the nominally independent, corrupt homelands […]
Tracy McVeigh Body Language One of the world’s most revered scientists has developed a theory that fat people are happier than thin ones. James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist who was jointly responsible for discovering the structure of DNA, believes that plumper women are also likely to enjoy a better sex life than their thin […]
Can Europe see beyond its own nose? We fear not. Can Germany conceive of interests more important than its own greedy aggrandizement? It seems not. Is the rich north able to grasp the paradox that, by sharing things around a little, it may enrich not merely the rest of the world but, also, itself? Evidently […]
GERMANY stands accused of allegedly using under-hand tactics to secure hosting the 2006 Soccer World Cup. Fifa president Sepp Blatter has admitted he knew of the letters some members of Fifa received from the secretary of the German bid team, but had not reported the matter to the police. Blatter was responding to allegations by […]
Robert Kirby THE BAYONET FIELD by Peter Wilhelm (Ad Donker) This collection of the short stories of Peter Wilhelm again reveals his extraordinary gifts, both as writer and as intuitive diarist of the human condition. Of Wilhelm’s output of some 70 short stories and novellas, collected here are 20. Set in the past, the present […]
Haidar Eid THE END OF THE ‘PEACE PROCESS’: OSLO AND AFTER by Edward Said (Pantheon) The difficulty, albeit necessity, of addressing the current situation in Palestine emanates from the euphoria of the mainstream media accompanying the signing of the Oslo Accords in 199. The mainstream media avoided the agreement’s denial of Palestinian rights, endorsing the […]
David Macfarlane Chronic internal conflicts, and destructive and dictatorial management styles, in the national Department of Education could seriously hinder delivery on core features of education provision at school level. The Ministry of Education has been receiving flak on policy grounds, in particular its ditching of Curriculum 2005 following the recommendations of a ministerially appointed […]
multiparty democracy Ebrahim Harvey left field The increasing convergence between the ruling African National Congress and the state, similar to National Party rule before, represents dangers for our infant and fragile democracy. This is so in spite of the fact that white racist rule is gone and we have had a non-racial democracy since 1994. […]
PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Parks Mankahlana has asked that his paternity test be postponed. Mankahlana was due to undergo a test on Monday to determine whether he is the father of an eight-year-old boy whose mother is claiming child maintenance. Mankahlana said he had other commitments and will now be tested on July 17 at the Nelspruit […]
There is really no time left in which to dodge around the truth. South Africa has reimposed the death sentence. Once a world leader in judicial executions – until the moratorium of 1989 put a stop to hangings – the new South African government has brought back executive killing with a harsh vengeance. But this […]
Thuli Nhlapo The Durban Aids 2000 conference will not have any delegates from organisations for disabled persons nor will there be disabled presenters – in spite of the fact that 15E000 scholarships were awarded to a number of delegates to enable their participation. According to one of the organisers, Fakazile Myeza, presenters submitted abstracts of […]
Two former Durbanites are on an epic motorcycle trip that started in New York 15 months ago and is still far from finished Gavin Foster ‘I was in New York, working on Wall Street, when Noah sent me an e-mail from London, where he was living,” remembers Trevor Sproat. “He suggested that it was time […]
Margaret Court has no time to practise now she’s preaching Jon Henderson Margaret Court, one of the great Wimbledon campaigners, stepped back on to Centre Court last week for the first time since her playing days. Or, to be more precise, it was the Reverend Margaret Court who returned to the world’s most pampered patch […]
THE ruling junta in Ivory Coast says it has struck a deal to pay its mutinous soldiers, but would not give details of the agreement. Soldiers who had helped military ruler, General Robert Guei, stage a coup over Christmas, rioted in the streets of Abidjan and other cities, demanding to be paid for their help […]
Street traders involved in a high court case with members of two Durban mosques claim the worshippers themselves are often guilty of impairing the dignity of the places of worship Paul Kirk Worshippers at the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere have been accused of using prayer meetings as convenient opportunities to settle old scores […]
Anthony Browne The long-feared new wave of HIV infection has arrived in San Francisco, the city that first alerted the world to the epidemic 20 years ago. News that the city now has the same infection levels as sub-Saharan Africa has sparked fears across the United States and Europe that years of safe-sex education are […]
The high price of anti-Aids drugs, socio- economic issues, wars, disrupted family lives, untreated sexual diseases and now possible genetic mutations – all factors in the epidemic that is Aids Ready for a fight: The Zimbabwean Movement for Democratic Change, which announced it will challenge 27 of the 62 seats Zanu-PF won in last month’s […]
Philippa Garson class struggle It would appear that the battle for the soul of the country’s curriculum is far from over. When Minister of Education Kader Asmal took the decision to subject the African National Congress’s flagship education policy, Curriculum 2005, to independent scrutiny in February this year by appointing a review committee to look […]
THE International Monetary Fund will not impose conditions and policies on African countries, the IMF chief has said. IMF managing director Horst Koehler told a news conference at the end of a one-day visit to Mozambique late Thursday that instead it will give priority to dialogue. “The IMF is not here … to lecture, to […]
Gavin Foster MOTORCYCLING Five-time world motorcycle champion Joey Dunlop was killed during an international race at Tallinn in Estonia last week. The 48-year-old Dunlop died instantly when he slid off the rain-drenched track and hit a tree while leading during the second lap of the 125cc race on his works Honda. Dunlop was untouchable on […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Smart television producers will by now have recognised a cash cow in the making. If nothing else, the coverage of the recent King commission hearings showed that there’s a wealth of real-life drama out there, just waiting to be exploited. The hearings had every element of a excellent tragicomedy. There was the […]
The decision to award the third cellular licence to Cell C was supported by only three councillors Ivor Powell A week after the government’s announcement that South Africa’s third cellular telephone licence is to be given to the Saudi-backed Cell C consortium, the award seems as shaky and compromised as ever. A cluster of new […]
A LIECHTENSTEIN court has frozen the bank accounts of Nigeria’s late military ruler Sani Abacha on the request of lawyers acting on behalf on the Nigerian government, a spokesman said on Thursday. Various accounts at three banks in the principality were blocked on Monday, according to the spokesman. He gave no indication of the sum […]
Marianne Merten A key suspect behind the Cape transport conflict is a known taxi strongman who escaped trial in 1998 for multiple attempted murders and assaults after one witness was killed and others refused to testify. This had been the 13th time since 1993 that charges against Victor Sam, then secretary gene-ral of the Cape […]
William Fotheringham CYCLING Lance Armstrong was pushed into a small, but interesting Freudian slip. He was asked whether a second Tour de France victory would be harder to achieve than his first: “It’s hard to win the first because you don’t have the experience, it’s hard to win the second because you don’t have that […]
active Marianne Merten Ten grade 11 and 12 pupils crowd into a cold classroom at Langa High School, in a Cape Town township, on an overcast afternoon to attend extra science tutorials held by University of Cape Town students as part of the ActivScience project. Thirty UCT BSc students visit four township high schools Mondays […]
THE Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria on Thursday ordered that suspended Civil Aviation Authority chief Trevor Abrahams be given back his pilot licence, passport and other personal documents. CAA spokeswoman Merle O’Brien said the documents were returned to Abrahams after the prosecutor initially failed to provide a basis for the charges of fraud, corruption, defeating […]