Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Rustenburg | Saturday 6.30pm. FRENCH-born striker Alain Amougou scored the goal that set up Sundowns for a 2-0 victory over Free State Stars in the Rothmans Cup final here on Saturday. Dreadlocked Amougou struck after 37 minutes with a shot from just inside the penalty area that took a deflection off Zambian defender […]

THE Virginia Regional Court on Wednesday imposed a R500000 fine on the management of Rovic diamond mine after 20 people were killed in a mudslide in November 1996, SABC radio news reported on Thursday. On December 1, the manager of the mine near Dealesville in the Free pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter. Pieter Smith […]

SOUTH African defender Lucas Radebe scored in the dying minutes to give Leeds United a 1-0 win over Spartak Moscow on Thursday night and a place in the last 16 of the UEFA Cup. Radebe’s late strike lifted the English Premiership side into a 2-2 third round aggregate draw with the Russians and they advanced […]

SOUTH African soccer skipper Lucas Radebe has added his voice to those campaigning the country’s hosting of the 2006 World Cup. Radebe has told the British media that his country is ready to host the finals and said “There is no doubt South Africa is ready.” Radebe, who is also the skipper of his English […]

POLICE are on Friday searching for the body of a man who was apparently eaten by crocodiles in the Sabie River in the Kruger National Park at the weekend, SABC television news reported on Thursday night. Mike Webber, a friend and a four-year-old child were swimming in the river when Webber shouted that there were […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Port Elizabeth | Saturday 6.35pm. ENGLAND have scored 364/9 in reply to South Africa’s first innings 450 all-out on the third day of the second Test at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth. The last wicket of the eight that were claimed by the South Africans was that of Chris Silverwood (6) who […]

AN electrical or fuel supply fault downed the Piper Chieftain that crashed after take-off from Rand airport on Monday, killing 10 people. The Star reports that civil aviation investigators found that one of the plane’s two engine’s failed as it took off. Civil Aviation Authority technical adviser Rennie van Zyl told the newspaper that the […]

STEVEN MANN, Stellenbosch | Friday 6.00pm. AMANDA Coetzer served well and hit some blistering backhands to beat Steffi Graf in three sets on Friday, avenging her defeat at the hands of the German on Tuesday. The diminutive South Africa’s victory draws the Spar Challenge exhibition series to one all, with a final match to be […]

SOUTH Africa will meet New Zealand in the semi-finals after overturning a 7-0 deficit to oust Canada 17-7 in their Cup quarterfinal of the IRB World Sevens Series in Stellenbosch. The boks went down 7-0 early on in the game when Nik Witkowski scored under the posts. In other Cup quarterfinals, favourites Fiji edged Samoa […]

THE number of air crashes in the past week has risen to three, with at least five people killed in two separate aircraft crashes in Mpumalanga on Friday. On Monday 10 people died in a plane crash in Germiston, one of the worst civil aviation accidents in almost twenty years. The Civil Aviation Authority said […]

PERSISTENT rain forced the abandonment of the first of five one-day matches between Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka at Bulawayo on Saturday. Zimbabwe were 65 for one after 14.5 overs in reply to Sri Lanka’s 284 for nine when the match was called off. Three half centuries and steady scoring down the order took Sri Lanka […]

Shaun Harris TAKING STOCK The most profitable investment decisions are often contrary, made against the market trend or in the face of prevailing fashion. At the moment it seems that this thinking can yield value in the vehicle market. It turns out, according to WesBank CE Ronnie Watson, that motor dealers are currently looking for […]

CD of the week Okay, Orbital have sampled Dollar on In the Middle of Nowhere (ffrr). It shows an admirable open-mindedness, if you ask me. Not that you’d expect anything less. My favourite Orbital moment is when they whack the chorus of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth through the speakers at their […]

Aaron Nicodemus Most government hospitals are bustling, noisy places. The wail of infants punctuates the low murmur of waiting-room voices. Patients are wheeled on squeaky trolleys from room to room. Machines beep. The hallways of rural Derdepoort Community hospital on the North-West province/ Botswana border, though, are eerily quiet. This modern and superbly equipped hospital, […]

Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL What a relief to discover that the Democratic Party may also be led by a bunch of venal, ambitious, self-serving bastards; that, in the very best traditions of politicians the world over, some of its leaders may also now know how to waken the dead when they need a few […]

Marianne Merten This is not the first time that the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and police intelligence services have been linked to the string of explosions – with the last two high-profile restaurant bombings, 576 blasts – that have rocked the Cape since 1996: l In October the Mail & Guardian revealed that NIA informer […]

Fiona Macleod Six cheetahs from the De Wildt Cheetah Research and Breeding Centre, one of South Africa’s most reputable breeding centres of endangered species, were exported this week to a safari park in China that has been universally condemned by animal welfare organisations. John Wedderburn, of the Asian Animal Protection Network, describes a recent visit […]

Barry Streek The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is to give an average of only R3 000 to each of the 16 700 victims of apartheid identified during its hearings. “It is very little,” TRC commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize acknowledged this week, saying the awards would be merely “symbolic”. “It is simply an acknowledgment of their […]

Marianne Merten ‘The Party Is On!” billboards proclaim along Cape Town’s main thoroughfares with just 21 days to go before the new millennium. It has not been an easy path for the Mother City. After announcing plans for the mother of all parties at the start of this year, it all seemed to collapse when […]

Paul Trueman Arthur C Clarke may have correctly predicted the uses of orbiting satellites and artificial intelligence, but boy did he come a cropper with his notion of a video phone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey a character makes a video call home from a space station, and chats to his daughter on a huge […]

The diary of Charlene Smith in the week leading up to the trial of the man accused of raping her A week before the trial, I “crashed”. The police had asked me to give further details of the penetrative acts during the rape, and I did. But it put images back in my head I […]

campaign Marianne Merten and Ivor Powell Deon Mostert, the man arrested this week in connection with the recent Cape Town bombings, asked police informers to help carry out the bombings, according to police intelligence documents. The documents say that Mostert told the police informers he had protection from three senior police officers tasked with investigating […]

Aaron Nicodemus A labour arbitrator has reinstated two top officials from the Medicines Control Council (MCC) who were ousted during a purge of the drug-regulating body’s management in March 1998. The former minister of health, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, axed the officials after the MCC’s refusal to approve clinical trials of the controversial Aids drug Virodene. But […]

Channel vision As we see increasingly often, there’s nothing the SABC television news department enjoys better than leering at someone else’s misfortune. All those loving examinations of dead bodies hanging out of taxis, weeping mothers, body bags, blood- stained teddy bears. Last Sunday evening though, SABC television news excelled its meanest receipts in a sordid […]

Humour is subtly present in most of Carl Becker’s works currently on show at the Karen McKerron Gallery, writes Alex Dodd There’s nothing like taking a look at something familiar from a different angle. A mere change of vantage point can entirely reinvent a thing to which you’ve grown innured. New life. It’s simply not […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer The first thing that must be said about the third Rothmans Cup final is that it certainly is not what we anticipated last July when the richest domestic knockout competition in Africa kicked off. Sundowns reaching their third consecutive final comes as no surprise, but where did Free State Stars come from? […]

DEPUTY President Jacob Zuma on Thursday wished South African Muslims well as they embark on the holy month of Ramadaan on Thursday night. “These thirty days of fasting are, as we understand it, a period not only about abstention from food and drink, but also a time of deep spiritual rejuvenation and awakening,” he said […]

Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH They’ve started it already. According to a Jazz-FM station DJ, who maddens me daily by playing pop instead of jazz, and who interrupts good jazz with idle chatter – I get particularly mad when a guitar solo is truncated – the “product of the century” is the paper clip. […]

Ann Eveleth The European Union Foundation for Human Rights will continue to fund civil society projects, legal advice offices and precedent-setting legal cases until September 2003 in terms of a recent “in principle” agreement between the EU and the South African government, EU ambassador Michael Laidler said this week. The foundation recently secured R33- million […]

Urban Barney Cohen RIGHT TO REPLY We refer to your article “The SABC’s mounting sleaze” in last week’s edition of the Mail & Guardian in which mention is made of Urban Brew. We feel Urban Brew Studios cannot be blamed if we have come to the conclusion that the M&G, which also happens to be […]

ZIMBABWE sold 28 tonnes of elephant hides on Friday to both domestic and foreign buyers at auction for 23.2 million Zimbabwe dollars. The auction was conducted at the headquarters of the country’s National Parks and Wildlife department in Harare. The hides are used to manufacture high quality leather products. Last year 80 tonnes of hide […]

Donna Block SHARE WORLD First birthdays are usually a watershed, a milestone, and reason to celebrate. On January 1 2000 the euro, Europe’s single currency, will have its first birthday, but it appears no one’s going to be coming to the party. The 11 European participants in the euro will not be breaking open the […]