Merryman Kunene The resignation of Clemens Westerhof as Zimbabwe coach has by design or accident disrupted the country’s preparation for the World Cup qualifier against South Africa. That’s not to say caretaker coach Meshack Marimo is not up to the task. Problems for the Warriors go deeper than just replacing a temperamental coach. That’s the […]
Despite a clear policy on prison leave, Eugene Terre’Blanche was recently granted weekend parole while a seemingly deserving prisoner was not Lebo Malepe and Sammy Modiba It took a last-minute court application to get Phola Katisi to attend her brother’s funeral, while Eugene Terre’Blanche enjoyed 12 hours of freedom, courtesy of a bureaucratic mix-up in […]
The golden tots captured American hearts and gold medals at Atlanta 96. Worryingly … they’re back again Duncan Mackay To many people they epitomised the Olympics four years ago. It was impossible to be in Atlanta and fail to be struck by the huge publicity that surrounded the American women’s gymnastics team who won the […]
photographs Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Aids 2000 conference committee has banned photographs by an award-winning Dutch photographer on the grounds that the images provide an excessively graphic insight into the dreadfulness of the HIV/Aids epidemic. The photographer, Geert van Kesteren, from Holland, submitted an application early this year to the committee to exhibit his […]
This year’s Vita fine art awards are in a state of post-Steven Cohen politeness, but they’re still the best we’ve got Kathryn Smith Urban Futures 2000 and the 13th international Aids conference in Durban aside, July is the month when aspiring artists seeking acknowledgement, a small taste of almost-celebrity and perhaps a bit of cash […]
The economic modelling unit is the brains behind the Reserve Bank’s inflation targeting policy David Le Page To each age, its anathema. Idolatry, witchcraft and the plague have been succeeded by inflation and so, deep within the glass monolith of the Reserve Bank and many floors up, we have an economic modelling unit. Theirs is […]
Peter Dickson With most of the land still in private hands and R40-million spent on the development model for the Coega industrial development zone, Portnet and the Coega Development Corporation (CDC) are using a worldwide study tour for a costly, last- minute rethink on the Eastern Cape’s “economic miracle”. Meanwhile, back home, South Africa’s leading […]
To paraphrase from a character in one of Toni Morrison’s great novels: “The trouble with these people is that they just don’t know when to stop.” OK, I admit it, I’m still smarting. Sitting in the centre of the African continent, staring out at its myriad wonders, I find myself still smouldering like the magnificently […]
Deon Potgieter BOXING Charles Mailula’s attempt at becoming South Africa’s fourth successive boxer in recent times to win a junior featherweight world title has been postponed due to an administrative problem. “There was a problem in getting his United States visa in time,” says publicist Terry Pettifer. Mailula was to have challenged Carlos Contreras for […]
free’ in the Eastern Cape Peter Dickson The Port Elizabeth metropole, described by Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete last month as “the rape capital of South Africa”, is to be the target of a top-level police research project into why less than 10% of the area’s rapists are caught and jailed. >From January […]
Jeremy Cronin Crossfire The newly launched Democratic Alliance (DA), dominated as it is by Tony Leon’s party, represents two not entirely converging impulses found in the Democratic Party. On the one hand there is the electoral juggernaut that quite shamelessly stirs the racial phobias of minority constituencies. On the other, there is the DP’s Thatcherite […]
Up to 25-million people are infected with Aids in Africa, according to the United Nations Aids Programme Khadija Magardie The continent with the highest number of people with Aids was chosen to host the 13th International Aids Conference. Altogether, there are now 16 countries in Africa in which more than one-tenth of the adult population […]
Sierra Leone’s diamond trade may be banned in an attempt to cut off the cash flow financing the civil war David Le Page The United Nations Security Council this week took its most decisive step yet in stopping the trade in “conflict diamonds” when it announced plans to suspend all trade in gems from the […]
Kevin Mitchell Pete Sampras’s opponents might have hoped he was going to disintegrate in pain and self-doubt at this Wimbledon. But Pistol Pete showed this week he is not ready to be run out of town just yet. The title-holder came through a third- round examination of his resolve and his aching left shin last […]
Tom Cox CD OFTHEWEEK Masquerading as the best bar band in the world, The Jayhawks, for anyone who’s actually played their last three albums more than once, are in fact trail-blazing studio scientists: the most complex of all the alternative country bands. The fact that they were written off as too “straightforward” and “trad” seems […]
Guy Willoughby ‘I saw this medieval woodcut of Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge. Beneath the tree there’s an ape picking up an apple, a windfall, wanting to eat of the tree as well … Is this inexcusable, or ghastly and bizarre? That is the moment in which our play takes shape.” Basil […]
Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Myths fool thousands and religious myths fool millions. The old apartheid myths of the communist onslaught with reds under the beds and black cut-throats in the ikhaya are dead, but there are plenty of others around. Most countries acclaim democracy as a good method of achieving a government which represents the […]
situation Marianne Merten Turbulent sea currents and unseasonably calm weather this week thwarted the transfer of the remaining 900 tons of oil from the sunken Treasure wreck and the dispersal of oil slicks from the Cape coast. Salvage operators and conservationists face a catch-22 situation: while calm weather prevails oil slicks do not disperse and […]
Paul Kirk and Marianne Merten The man hired by Golden Arrow buses to provide security to its besieged drivers is the KwaZulu-Natal hotel owner who allegedly offered a security guard money to withdraw a rape charge against tycoon Jonty Sandler. Norman Reeves, the managing director of the Combat Group of Companies, is a former regimental […]
Angus Begg Cruising through the quiet Mpumalanga highlands town of Machadodorp, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire town had just attended its own funeral. Unemployed youths linger around the general dealer in trademark fashion, an attractive, period-piece church stands as a landmark in the town centre and an assortment of 4×4 vehicles pass […]
>From page 22 Moreover, the correlation between human beings eating primates and Aids is poor. As we have noted, Guinea-Bissau has sooty mangabey Aids, but no sooty mangabeys. In northern Congo the pygmies eat primates, but have no HIV. The “natural transfer” theory simply does not deserve the confidence placed in it by most scientists. […]
Minority opposition parties in the National Assembly have found common ground, despite their differences Howard Barrell and Jaspreet Kindra The oddest of couples on the opposition benches in the National Assembly have emerged as the stars of the first year of the new Parliament that has just come to a close. Politically, Mosibudi Mangena, president […]
INNOVATIONS There’s long been software available to do personal make-overs – hair, make-up and so on – but like many software applications, this one has now found its way online, at www.makeover.com. You can upload your own photo (or use that of a model with similar looks) and try out different hairstyles, different make-up combinations […]
affair Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER Amid all the hype and hope of the 2006 World Cup bid, it was all too easy to forget that there is the small matter of an important qualifying match for the 2002 World Cup on Sunday. Bafana Bafana travel to Harare on Saturday for a Group E showdown with Zimbabwe […]
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 […]