Staff Reporter

White South African music is burgeoning, with more releases than ever before. Our critics listen to a host of recent CDs The Buckfever Underground: Jou Medemens Is Dood (Janus) A really clever concept which unfortunately comes off sounding pretentious as hell. Basically what you get here are six sparsely arranged acoustic guitar pieces with some […]

Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL Are the South African working classes about to get the kind of leadership they need? Yes, if we are not being misled. For the signs are there that the leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) may be giving up on bombast in favour of intelligent engagement […]

John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF ‘Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say,” the late John Lennon once jingled on the subject of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. This week we had the pleasure of Her Majesty’s company in our humble country for the second time in five years. Last […]

Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH In India, they called him “Marshall Law”. And with good reason. In a Test match at Kanpur in 1983, he took four wickets in each innings. And made 92 with the bat in an innings. An Indian cricket fan vividly remembers the two newspaper headlines that described the event […]

Marianne Merten A new report on moneylending in South Africa questions the effectiveness of the recently established Micro Finance Regulatory Council to regulate the R15- billion industry often accused of widespread malpractice. A Black Sash report says new measures have downscaled moneylending to a consumer issue which addresses neither the unwillingness of the formal banking […]

Howard Barrell The Commonwealth Summit in Durban is being dominated by a confidential internal report saying the organisation should increase its powers to act against member states for human rights abuses. The document would pave the way for action against the governments of countries like Cameroon, Kenya and Zimbabwe if they did not improve their […]

Ivor Powell A SECOND LOOK As fighting flares up again in the war- torn Democratic Republic of Congo, and international diplomats engage in ever more frantic efforts to patch up the Lusaka ceasefire agreement, the question increasingly being asked is whether there actually was any ceasefire in the first place. Speaking in Uganda this week, […]

socks Kevin Mitchell It was going to be the last big fight of the century, a chance to bring a hundred years of chaos and unmatchable drama to something of a dignified close. And, before a new outbreak of shenanigans last week, we had every reason to believe that the fighters involved – Lennox Lewis […]

Heather Hogan Police are investigating a charge of arson after St Peter’s church in Hermanus was vandalised in the early hours of the morning on Halloween. Reverend Dan Auret believes if he hadn’t arrived when he had, the church, the oldest in the town, would have burned to the ground. He is unsure whether the […]

Andrew Muchineripi previews the weekend’s clash of the giants The Rothmans Cup knockout soccer competition has been described, with considerable justification, as the “unbelievable” event of the lengthy South African soccer season. Aware of the need to make an immediate impact when they launched the cup two years ago, the sponsors offered a R1-million first […]

The Russian National Ballet brought Little Red Riding Hood to Springs. Kit Peel went to check her out ‘I heard about it at the hairdressers,” the lady in the next seat explained. “When the ballet came to Springs last year, my hairdresser told me that it was disgusting. A load of queers leaping about the […]

Midi TV this week applied to the IBA to amend its licence conditions. Jubie Matlou attended the hearing Senior counsel Malcolm Wallis led a predominantly white male team that presented Midi TV’s licence amendment application before the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) this week. Kuresh Patel, legal adviser to Midi TV CEO Marcel Golding, sat quietly […]

Marianne Merten A Khayelitsha shebeen owner says he has no option but to run an illegal operation because apartheid legislation forced drinking in townships underground. The shebeen owner has applied to the Cape High Court for the return of his liquor worth R130 000. Last month police from Khayelitsha and Operation Good Hope seized alcohol […]

Jennifer Ferguson’s show Untimely is at present running at the Barney Simon Theatre in the Market Theatre complex until November 20. The performance coincides with the CD release of her 1989 album of the same name, to which a dynamic cover version of the Dave Marks song Master Jack has been added. During December she […]

Ebrahim Harvey CROSSFIRE Let us say that the African renaissance is not a grand diversion from the serious post-apartheid problems that the African National Congress-led government faces, as some argue, and that it is a genuine attempt to resolve the deepening crisis in Africa. Because of this crisis – of which we are a part […]

South African second-hand traders are cleaning up their act, writes Rowan Callahan There are many similarities between the current second-hand goods market and the used-car market of old. A few years ago there were thousands of small used-car dealers all over the place offering “low mileage, one-owner bargains” out of dingy premises. What people got […]

Khadija Magardie BODY LANGUAGE One of the funniest “girlie” scenes in a modern movie was in the 1992 hit comedy My Cousin Vinny. The movie revolves around mechanic-turned-lawyer who has to defend a relative accused of murder. In the now legendary scene, Marisa Tomei’s character, Mona Lisa Vito, is complaining to her boyfriend, Vinny (Joe […]

Ivor Powell and Howard Barrell New light could be thrown on the assassination of Zambian opposition politician Major Wezi Kaunda if foreign diplomats accede to the dramatic courtroom request of one of two men arrested in connection with the murder. On Wednesday the suspects, speaking from the dock in preliminary hearings, called on embassy officials […]

Bill Gates’s embattled Microsoft was highly praised on Thursday by none other than former president Nelson Mandela.

Andy Capostagno Rugby World Cup A week has come and gone and the assessments of the fourth Rugby World Cup are still at wide variance. There are the familiar voices of the traditionalists maintaining that all the games (bar England versus Tonga when the bus was late) started on time, a total of 1,75- million […]

Mail & Guardian reporters The three SABC executives named in a report alleging commissioning irregularities are: the SABC’s head of television, Molefe Mokgatle; the head of corporate communications, Thaninga Shope; and the control account finance manager, Prince Phaweni. The report, compiled by the auditing company KPMG, has recommended that the three executives be suspended pending […]

A group of Swedish artists are set to tour the country from November 20, reports Riaan Wolmarans The Swedes are coming, and no, this is not another illegal alien story. From November 20 to 28, the Sweden South Africa Partnership will take place throughout South Africa. This initiative, endorsed by the governments of the two […]

Movies of the week Political corruption lies behind the events in both Divorcing Jack and An Ideal Husband, the two most impressive movies to open this week, and both are from the British Isles. Apart from that, they couldn’t be more different. Divorcing Jack is David Caffrey’s feature debut, and it’s a lunatically fine one. […]

Mail & Guardian reporter What is an Internet company worth? The spiralling values of Net stocks now make it a quasi-scientific question. And two Salomon Smith Barney analysts are just the latest to attempt an answer. London-based Gerard van Hamel Platerink and Morten Andersen have recently completed a detailed note on the subject which provides […]

If any proof were needed that the SABC’s management and governing board has failed in its duty to the South African public, that was forthcoming during interviews for a new board in Cape Town this week. Reluctantly, both outgoing board chair Professor Paulus Zulu and finance subcommittee members Paul Davis and Litha Nyonyha finally admitted […]

Shaun Harris TAKING STOCK Small investors’ nerves are getting frayed, it seems, as we approach the end of the year. That was the clear message to come out of the last unit trust quarterly results, which showed a strong move out of equity funds into low-risk money market funds, or out of the unit trust […]

Iden Wetherell As Commonwealth leaders meet in Durban this weekend, relations between Harare and London, which have been plummeting since the election of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997, are at a new low. Calls for Zimbabwe to be expelled from the association of former British colonies for human rights abuses are mounting. The two […]

Justin Pearce ‘It was eight months ago the police took him away,” Maryam recalls. “First they take the husband to starve the wife.” Maryam (47) and her husband are Eritreans who had spent all of their adult lives in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. They were part of a community of thousands who, during the […]

Though fairly new to South Africa, the eco-village concept has been around for about 70 years, reports Jacqui Pile James Shepard is a man with a plan. As an ecologist working at Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre in Roodepoort, he has dreams of turning most of the centre’s 18ha of land into a working example of how […]

The English cricket team lack the talent necessary to win on their tour of South Africa, writes Neil Manthorp England seem determined to ensure that attitudes, approaches, appearances and results on their tour of South Africa stay the same as on all their other tours this decade. Based on performances so far, it will take […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, is likely to oust vice- chancellors at two prominent universities and appoint administrators to run the institutions in line with recommendations contained in a new Bill soon to be finalised by Parliament. According to reliable sources close to Asmal, the universities of the North and […]

Barry Streek South Africa’s 739 unelected traditional leaders are being paid nearly R600- million a year in salaries – at an average of R65 071,84 a month or R780 853,68 a year. This was revealed by Minister for Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi in reply to a question tabled in the National Assembly by […]