Staff Reporter

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 […]

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 […]

DONOR countries meeting here on Thursday pledged $3,7-billion in quick-disbursing financial assistance to Africa over the next three years to help boost growth and reduce poverty. Representatives from some 20 countries and international organisations pledged the aid under the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA), hitherto known as the Special Program of Assistance. The budget support […]

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 […]

SOUTH Africa will meet Zambia in the Cosafa Cup under-20 final at Vosloorus Stadium in Johannesburg on Friday after beating Zimbabwe 4-1 in Thursday’s semi-final. Zambia pipped Lesotho 2-0 to gain entrance to the final. The South Africans were too strong on Thursday, and scored three goals within five minutes in the second half. Benedict […]

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 […]

MSI Cellular, an international operator in the Khuluma 084 consortium bidding for the third cellular licence, announced on Thursday that it has won the GSM cellular licence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, now its 10th GSM licence in Africa. The DR Congo was the first African country to install a cellular network in 1986. […]

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? […]

ACCLAIMED filmmaker Richard Attenborough on Wednesday received an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Cape Town. Lord Attenborough, who was an outspoken opponent of apartheid, used his acceptance speech to pay homage to former president Nelson Mandela. He said the world was in awe of Mandela’s ability to resist recrimination and bitterness in […]

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 […]

LONMIN reported a 23% jump in underlying profits in the year to September 30 on Friday, buoyed by a strong performance at its platinum mines, and predicted a further improvement in the current year. The mining rump of the late Tiny Rowland’s former Lonrho empire, which last month withdrew a bid for Ghana’s Ashanti Goldfields, […]

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 […]

Local documentaries are getting more creative, more reflective – the days of talking heads are over, writes Andrew Worsdale Post-1976 the surge of mass opposition to the state in South Africa led to the establishment of setups like the Community Video Resource Association and a Super- Eight co-op under the Community Arts Project in Cape […]

David Le Page Your cellphone calls are probably still safe from eavesdroppers. But now Israeli researchers have discovered how to crack Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular encryption, it’s probably just a matter of time before they will become vulnerable to the listening capabilities of everyone from tabloid journalists to would-be blackmailers. The National […]

JUSTICE Minister Penuell Maduna on Wednesday acceded to a request from Cape High Court Judge President Edwin King that he retire at the end of April next year rather than the end of October. This comes after Maduna last week asked King to remain in office until the end of October. Maduna’s spokesman Paul Setsetse […]

Movie of the week Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been better than when he played a cyborg-assassin in The Terminator, and he has never been in a better movie. Subsequent attempts to extend his action career, in films such as The Last Action Hero and True Lies, were comparatively unsuccessful; attempts to develop his persona with […]

Marianne Merten Minister of Justice and Constitutional Planning Penuell Maduna failed to consult the country’s most senior judge, Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed, when he sought to extend the tenure of Judge Edwin King, the judge president of the Cape. This emerged during a week of controversy surrounding Maduna’s decision to extend Judge King’s tenure – […]

Business against Crime has installed another 63 spy cameras in the city of Cape Town, writes Marianne Merten Spy cameras on Cape Town’s streets from Eastern Boulevard to Roland Road near Parliament? It may sound like Big Brother is watching, but the people behind the closed-circuit television cameras are adamant they are just doing their […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 4.15pm. WESTERN Cape provincial crime intelligence chief Jeremy Veary released an identikit of a bomb suspect without consulting policemen working on the case because he believed the suspect was being protected by top Western Cape detectives. This information is contained in a signed statement by Veary, which he originally […]

Andy Capostagno WHO IS … ERNIE ELS? Ernie Els comes back to earth this week. Els plays in the Players Championship at Royal Cape for a total purse which is less than a third of what he won alone at the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge last week. The Players Championship is the start of the […]

Struan Douglas In the beginning there was sound. Sound was supreme – bringing people together and allowing them to journey within a deep meditation. Sound was the unifier – the inter-relator and the inter- connector. Yet, the true language of sound was no sound. It was something you could not hear, but only intuit. And […]

Barry Streek BIG MEN LITTLE PEOPLE: ENCOUNTERS IN AFRICA by Alec Russell (Macmillan) Despite its somewhat obvious title, which is over-emphasised by a picture of a pleading Jonas Savimbi on the cover, Alec Russell, who was the Daily Telegraph’s Johannesburg correspondent, has written an interesting book, based on his reporting experiences in Africa. For him, […]