Staff Reporter

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 […]

posters Paul Kirk During the June election Amichand Rajbansi’s Minority Front unleashed a secret weapon on Durban: a king-size poster. Now Rajbansi has to pay the price. Durban has strict by-laws relating to the placement of election posters. No posters can be placed on traffic signs, no more than one poster can be erected on […]

Justin Pearce travelled to the Ethiopian province of Tigray, a hot spot in the country’s border conflict with Eritrea The colonel sits in a cabin lined with plastic grain sacks (“net contents 100kg”) and decorated with paintings of the Ethiopian kings who kept the Italians at bay in the 19th century. “The moment our sovereignity […]

Charged with an earnest desire for peace and reconciliation, the communities of Dundee, in KwaZulu-Natal, and its surrounding districts rallied to commemorate the Anglo-Boer South African War Centenary (1999-2002) in true Rainbow Nation spirit. Last Saturday’s programme began with the re-enactment of the Battle of Talana (October 20 1899). A fine performance from volunteer men, […]

EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak has been given a clean bill of health after undergoing a series of medical tests on his ear at a Paris military hospital, an Egyptian newspaper reported Thursday. “The tests confirmed he is fine,” the pro-government Al-Ahram newspaper said. Mubarak, who is due back in Cairo later Thursday, held talks with […]

Channel vision Now that the recent surfeit of rugby is behind us, perhaps it is time to reflect on the surfeit of television advertising that accompanied it. And surfeit, overabundance, glut it most certainly was. If nothing else the coverage of the Rugby World Cup once again emphasised the urgent necessity for a strict rewriting […]

By Peter Dickson The Eastern Cape Department of Health, its hospital care services threatened with financial collapse within five years by an overload of Aids patients and its budget facing over-expenditure of R225- million this year as it struggles with a near billion-rand shortfall, went public this week on plans to rationalise state hospitals and […]

Will a virtual currency, transferred over the Internet, make hard cash redundant? Charlotte Denny investigates He is the darling of Wall Street, credited with engineering America’s longest post-war economic expansion. But the man who holds the future of the world economy in his hands, Alan Greenspan, the head of the United States Federal Reserve, is […]

Howard Barrell WHO IS … EMEKA ANYAOKU? Someone as convinced of his own gravity as he is of his sincerity is probably best suited to leading a pack of boy scouts or to another, similarly worthy cause. We could be forgiven for thinking such a man unlikely to be much good at politics. For, whereas […]

A CONTINGENT of 10 Malawian soldiersleft for the Zambian capital of Lusaka on Wednesday to begintraining forpeace-keeping duties inKinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Astatement fromthe Malawian army headquarters in Lilongwe said the Malawian contingent was part of an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) peace-keeping initiative. Army spokesmen stressed thatthe Malawian soldiers were merely […]

aspirations Dr Eddy Maloka CROSSFIRE South Africa’s geopolitical position within the region and xenophobia were raised sharply in articles that have appeared in the Mail & Guardian recently. These critical issues are raised against the background of our country’s call for the “African renaissance” which has failed to bring on board the old debate about […]

The Mail & Guardian apologises to its readers in the Northern Province who did not receive a copy of the November 5 to 11 edition of the newspaper. Unfortunately, the guide and driver of Allied Distibutors were involved in motor vehicle accident en route to Pietersburg, from where the M&G was to be distributed. The […]

Untiring, unrepentant and unscathed, ‘Teflon Don’ is boxing on, writes Donald McRae ‘See you in Paris, baby,” Don King had promised as the diamond-studded crucifix swung gently from his massive neck. And so, big Don being a man of his word, it came to pass. A day later we walked through Paris together. His cross […]

Adrian Searle Aaargh! Tracey’s menstrual knickers. Not that I’ve got a problem with Tracey Emin’s undies as such, but it’s such a Tracey thing to put them on show at the Tate Gallery in London. Emin’s Bed is the first thing you see, right there in the centre of the gallery in her Turner prize […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 6.30pm THE Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Liquor Bill, passed by Parliament in November 1998, is unconstitutional. This comes after then president Nelson Mandela referred the Bill to the Concourt with questions over its constitutionality. Mandela said he had reservations about the constitutionality of the Bill as […]

Khadija Magardie Mention the word “witch” and the imagination is likely to conjure up a host of images, ranging from black-shrouded spinsters bent over cauldrons to New Age hippies dancing naked in the moonlight. Few will expect them to be a group of rather pleasant-looking women and men, lounging around a garden patio with a […]

Barry Streek Despite pending gun control legislation, more than one million applications for firearm licences have been approved in the democratic South Africa, “but the rate of stolen” firearms is lower this year than the previous two years. This was revealed by Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete when he replied to a question […]

receive their rewards Awhopping R700 000 is on offer for organisations which deliver innovative poverty reduction programmes, writes Barry Streek A programme to recognise and reward innovative poverty reduction projects for government delivery programmes with R700 000 to 15 different projects has provoked huge interest from both the government and NGOs. In a rush to […]

AN outbreak of Lassa fever in eastern Sierra Leone has killed at least 80 people, while about 100 more are in an extremely serious condition in Segbwema Town, a doctor said. Dr Ibrahim Turay said: “The outbreak has been prevalent for some 10 months now since we took over Segbwema,” 255km east of Freetown. He […]

Robyn Hofmeyr was part of a small team which set out to make a film about women in war. They visited four regions: South Africa, Uganda, Israel and Palestine, and Bosnia. These are the survivors’ stories Our journey began in the Nkomanzi district of Mpumalanga where we heard the stories of displaced Mozambican women and […]

Donna Block SHARE WORLD I’ve come to the conclusion that having kids drives you a bit mad. I realized this when a friend in New York called to tell me that Nasdaq, the United States’s electronic share trading exchange, is going to set up shop in Europe and wants to create a strategy for 24-hour […]

Heather Hogan >From the dawn of Christianity there have been accounts of “witches” and “fortune- tellers” being stoned to death or burnt at the stake. At times churches even considered playing cards the devil’s tools and tarot card readers his disciples. Following this week’s launch of the SoulTidings Truth Cards, tarot cards based on the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Friday 12.45pm THE Department of Finance said on Friday that inland revenue and customs and excise receipts of R17,51-billion were collected in October, which was 1,2% less than the same month last year. The ministry said in its monthly report on the progress of the budget that total revenue in the […]

AVID hikers can explore six new hiking trails that will be opened to celebrate the festive season in the Kruger National Park. Called the Millenium Trails, the six routes will operate only over Christmas, from December 23 to 26, and over New Year, from December 30 to January 2. Head of the Kruger Park Trails […]

A CONTINGENT of 10 Malawian soldiers left for the Zambian capital of Lusaka on Wednesday to begin training for peace-keeping duties in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Malawian contingent is part of an Organisation of African Unity peace-keeping initiative. Army spokesmen stressed that the Malawian soldiers are merely monitors and will not […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00am. JUDGE Willem Heath was named Newsmaker of the Year by the Johannesburg Press Club on Wednesday. Heath’s Special Investigating Uni has recovered over R1,5 billion in state assets and money since it was launched last year by former president Nelson Mandela last year, himself a former recipients of the […]