SOUTH Africa’s second local government elections should be held on December 2, the Independent Electoral Commission has proposed. Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi is likely to announce a date by the second week of July. The constitution says municipal elections should be held between November 1 and January 31 next year.
Steve Bunce BOXING When Cindy Zamudio torched the toilets at her high school in Los Angeles she had no idea she was on her way to the boxing ring. She was ready for a career in prison. Zamudio is 18 years old and 121kg. She is the super-heavyweight amateur champion of the United States and […]
Justin Arenstein Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa has assembled a rogue’s gallery of disgraced politicians and shady financiers to fund his new R390-million casino hotel development in Maputo. The deal is one of a series involving Phosa and other prominent Mpumalanga figures under investigation by South Africa’s Scorpions unit and police commercial crime teams. Scorpions […]
Jaspreet Kindra As the Democratic Party flirts with the New National Party and the African National Congress espouses almost Thatcherite ideas, black consciousness parties and the Pan-Africanist Congress can safely claim to be the only ideological purists left in South Africa. Last week the Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa), the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and […]
Paul Kirk A group of United States pollution experts has described the air south of Durban as “toxic soup”, saying that the oil refineries around the city are emitting up to eight times the internationally acceptable amount of benzene. The survey by an American NGO, Communities for a Better Environment, detected a variety of other […]
ETHIOPIA has called on the international community to intervene on behalf of its nationals living in Eritrea, whom it claimed have been subjected to an “intensive campaign of hatred.” A foreign ministry communique said Eritrea’s sizeable Ethiopian community had suffered “persistent acts of reprisals and racist incitement (carried out) by the Eritrean government.” The statement […]
Mercedes Sayagues Why was Grace Mugabe sulking during her husband’s final campaign rally in Harare last Saturday? It could have been the low turnout – a mere 5E000 compared with the 100E000 who greeted Robert Mugabe on his return from exile 20 years ago. Or perhaps it was the three-hour delay in starting, while frantic […]
Howard Barrell OVER A BARRELL Helen Suzman was speaking with little fear of contradiction. “Some odd characters,” she told the assembled Democratic Party faithful on Monday, “have been joining the party.” She had the good grace this week – at a ceremony to name the DP’s parliamentary caucus room in Parliament after her and to […]
Meet the judges who will be presiding at the prestigious Investing in the Future Awards Mail & Guardian reporter An impressive panel of opinion-makers have agreed to judge the Investing in the Future Awards. The awards laud corporate social investment in South Africa and were established over a decade ago by the Mail & Guardian. […]
Helene Dancer CD OFTHEWEEK LTJ Bukem does in his debut album just what Daisy Buchanan does to Jay Gatsby in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:he puts you in a little cloud and pushes you around. United Kingdom musician and DJ LTJ “Danny Williamson” Bukem has this year released Journey Inwards on his Good Looking […]
THE Truth Commission’s Amnesty Committee has granted amnesty to former Minister of Police Adriaan Vlok, former Police Commissioner General Johannes Van Der Merwe and nine security policemen for their role in several bomb scares at cinema theatres around the country. The bomb scares, which all occurred in July 1988, were designed to prevent the film […]
and the hairy horn Glenda Daniels A 125-strong workforce from an East Rand factory went on strike after their boss refused to allow a witchdoctor into the premises to investigate why they were suffering rashes, impotence and headaches. When the witchdoctor was eventually allowed in, he discovered a piece of hairy animal horn, the removal […]
Peter Robinson Over the past few weeks South African cricket has been twisting and turning in mostly self-inflicted agony. But now we know the “Hansiegate” scandal not to be the product of bumbling Indian policemen or even, as was suggested at one stage, a devious Australian plot, what exactly is to be done next? In […]
Plenty of people have modelled themselves on him, but Tom Waits has never slunk in anyone’s shadow Tom Cox We are complete numbskulls to believe it’s true, of course, but there’s a brief moment at the Rex Theatre in Paris when several thousand of us think that we just may have been given Tom Waits’s […]
Belinda Beresford Position, position, position is the guiding maxim in property. But Donald Gordon, former head of Liberty Life and now head of Liberty International, is finding that possession is equally important. Having, metaphorically speaking, built a palatial mansion in South Africa called the Liberty Group, Gordon moved on to the more select address of […]
Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER Just when we feared the 1999-2000 South African soccer season would never end, it did. And what a sad finale it proved to be at a chilly, overcast, near-deserted Johannesburg Stadium. Bowing to long-running pressure, this humble scribe took some young relatives along and helped swell the crowd to 2 000 for […]
Khadija Magardie Various refugee organisations around South Africa used this year’s Africa Refugee Day to slam aspects of new refugee legislation as “irresponsible”. At gatherings and celebrations countrywide to commemorate June 20 – a day declared by the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity to highlight the plight of the continent’s refugees – […]
Andy Capostagno RUGBY When a great player shows signs of mortality it is a brave coach who tells him to shape up or ship out. Whether it was because of a knee injury that has not properly healed, a paucity of playing time or that most elusive of facets, a lack of ambition, scrumhalf Joost […]
Merryman Kunene In the aftermath of Bafana Bafana’s poor showing at the Nike Cup in the United States recently, the issue of finding a new national team – and coach – is back in the spotlight. By the end of the 2000 African Cup of Nations campaign in Ghana and Nigeria, South Africa had been […]
Thebe Mabanga Veteran theatre practitioner and community worker Phyllis Klotz takes her 12-year-old outfit, the Sibikwa Community Theatre Project, to the National Arts Festival this month. Sibikwa has produced prominent stage and television talent like Grace Mahlaba and Isidingo’s bitchy maid-cum-businesswoman, Tina Jaxa. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed and were rewarded with Vita awards […]
One of South Africa’s most scenic and sensitive natural areas in the Eastern Cape is dotted with illegal homesteads Fiona Macleod The government is planning a new national park on the Wild Coast of Pondoland, in the Eastern Cape, which is expected to end the illegal development of holiday homes by rich whites along the […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH Sometimes I can’t help feeling that the “education” that we got in school was invented by a con artist, sold by a charlatan and taught by a mountebank. In my day, for example, we were often forced to memorise “recitations” containing high-minded maxims that were supposed to guide us […]
PALM STALKER by Rocco Bergh (Penguin) Naval architect Robert Arquette has had an interesting beginning – a father lost at sea, a mother who died giving birth on a Zululand beach, the child reared first by a hard-drinking Scot living a lonely life in the bush, then by a shady missionary. Found by his uncle […]
Barry Streek The Royal Dutch/Shell group has allocated R4,5-million to two South African educational programmes concerning energy use over the next three years. This is part of the new Shell Foundation, which has received initial funding of more than R200-million for social and environmental projects relating to energy use throughout the world and which was […]
Whatever the outcome of the election in Zimbabwe this weekend, Robert Mugabe has a tough time ahead David Moore Call me an individualist, but the crisis Zimbabwe faces for the next few weeks could be fixed by one man: President Robert Mugabe. Even if a huge Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) or Zanu-PF majority floods […]
delays Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Northern Province public service commission has launched a probe into alleged irregularities involving the selection of prescribed textbooks for the province’s schools – irregularities that could lead to serious delays in textbooks reaching pupils. This comes less than a week after Minister of Education Kader Asmal announced the appointment […]
Marianne Merten When Hansie Cronje sat down for his second day of cross- examination this week few expected another bombshell from the Proteas’ disgraced and apologetic ex- captain. Instead he revealed he wished he had accepted the $250 000 offered to the team to throw the 1996 match in Mumbai. “I was annoyed with myself […]
Luvuyo Kakaza THEATRE The toll of apartheid on South Africa’s domestic workers has been well documented in literature, in television documentaries and in fiction film. These days, though, it’s rare to find a stage interpretation of the lives of household “servants”. But one is currently playing that could very well bring some guilty “madams” close […]
A report released recently shows that Johannesburg women have accepted sexual abuse as the norm Brenda Atkinson Young women in greater Johannesburg’s Southern Metropolitan Local Council (SMLC) have internalised their daily risk of sexual assault to the extent that most do not even consider forced sex to fall within the definition of sexual violence. This […]
Mercedes Sayagues In a last, desperate move to win the election, Zanu-PF militia are confiscating identity documents from villagers and farm workers across the country. ID documents are needed to vote. A replacement costs Z$250, or three days of work. At Shaka farm in Wedza, militia collected all ID documents, as well as Z$16 a […]
What’s new Getting vehicle and household insurance online is not only becoming easier; South African companies, like Nsureline (www.nsureline. com), are pushing the envelope in what’s possible over the web in the first place. The company, which is part of the BoE group, recently launched a secure site that delivers an impressive range of services […]
Neal Collins South African cricketers everywhere have been hit hard by the wild swinging of Cronjegate. You might have found an angry little knot of them at Lord’s last week, looking embarrassed while, in Cape Town, their game and their nation were being dragged through the mud at the King commission. While Cronje confessed to […]