Staff Reporter

The legal claims of 3 000 South Africans against a UK-based asbestos company are spotlighting the issue of multinational companies’ accountability for activities in developing countries, writes Richard Meeran The United Kingdom Court of Appeal has acceded to Cape Public Limited Corporation’s requests to halt the claims of 3 000 South African asbestos victims of […]

Peter Dickson A race war has erupted in the Eastern Cape town of Jeffreys Bay, after its mayor decided he did not want Nelson Mandela’s face in his office. Mayor Pierre van Wyk’s inauguration ceremony was boycotted by African National Congress councillors last week after he removed photos of Nelson Mandela, Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi […]

Dramatic Encounters series supervising producer Mickey Madoda Dube takes umbrage at Andrew Worsdale’s negative review I was greatly disappointed in Andrew Worsdale’s review of Dramatic Encounters on September 10. Far from professional, it was more about what Andrew would have wanted to see than what the films actually presented. Surely a professional reviewer should look […]

SAMOAN centre To’o Vaega, the man whose controversial try broke Welsh hearts in 1991, was so overwhelmed by his team’s victory that he named his son Cardiff. Vaega, now 34 and one of four survivors from the 1991 team playing for Samoa against Wales on Thursday, scored the first try in his country’s shock 16-13 […]

WORLD Cup favourites New Zealand pulverised Italy 101-3, the highest score of the 1999 tournament, on Thursday after record-breaking performances by fullback Jeff Wilson and winger Jonah Lomu. Wilson broke the All Blacks’ career try record, held by former winger John Kirwan, with his second try of three in the group B game. Wilson now […]

Dave Hill BODY LANGUAGE Sorry to bring this up, but I think I’ve got a problem with mating. The thing is, since taking up with my partner five years ago, she is the only female I’ve managed to impregnate. True, I’ve done it twice, but if I’m to maximise my chances of generating offspring that […]

A new plan has been designed to deal with the problems that have rendered South Africa’s taxi industry uncontrollable. Scotch Tagwireyi reports As taxi violence and road deaths reach epidemic proportions, the government is preparing sweeping plans to revamp South Africa’s deadliest industry. The plan includes taking the country’s present fleet of 120 000 minibus […]

Alex Dodd In a massive departure from Eighties- style puritanism, the Nineties, or rather millennial, means of art promotion is all about unabashed mutual co-operation between the arts and business: you scratch my back, I’ll decorate your boardroom. Hardly new really. Caravaggio was having it off with the Catholic bishops in exchange for oil paints […]

THE newly-updated 1999 edition of the SA Rugby Annual – the “bible’ of the game in South Africa – is now available. The redesigned and revamped SA Rugby Annual 1999 fills the void left by the disappearance after 1997 of the Bankfin Annual, edited for 26 years by Beeld journalist Quintus van Rooyen until his […]

THE son of Nigeria’s late military ruler General Sani Abacha, a top security aide and fellow defendants were charged on Thursday with the murder of the wife of late opposition politician Moshood Abiola. Mohammed Abacha, Major Hamza al-Mustapha and three others were charged in a packed Lagos magistrate’s court with the June 1996 killing of […]

Wally Mbhele and Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The commissioner of correctional services, Khulekani Sitole, is embroiled in a new scandal following accusations that he has used more than R1,2-million of the department’s money to fund a lucrative scholarship he named after himself. The Department of Correctional Services says it has already spent R1-million of the […]

John Matshikiza CROSSFIRE The passion for revising our history in line with what we still tiresomely call our “new dispensation” is getting out of hand. It’s one thing to say that history must be rewritten to show what really happened in the course of our various national sagas. It’s quite another thing to try to […]

Scriptwriter and creator of sci-fi TV series First Wave, Chris Brancato, tells Katy Bauer how to hurtle across Hollywood potholes without getting whiplash or becoming a jerk Writers? They’re a pain in the arse. They hover between chronic insecurity, bar- room brawls and delusions of grandeur. Hardly surprising really. The vast majority do exist in […]

A GERMAN–Egyptian archaeological team has discovered an immense stone building that once served as the stables of pharaoh Ramses II, Egypt’s antiquities council announced on Thursday. The stables, which could shelter up to 400 horses, cover around two hectares and are sub-divided into several rectangular areas, each with its own gate, antiquities chief Gaballah Ali […]

models? Tom Lodge A SECOND LOOK Before considering any changes to the existing electoral system it may be useful to recall its virtues. National list proportional representation is just about the simplest way to translate voters’ preferences into equitable representation. It benefits small parties, even very small ones, by allowing them a voice in law-making […]

Khadija Magardie The South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) skewed policy on HIV/Aids has once again come under the spotlight, after an HIV-positive soldier in Durban sought legal assistance after threats to discontinue his anti-retroviral therapy. Following a letter from the soldier’s lawyer, the SANDF backed down, stating that it would continue treating patients already […]

Mail & Guardian reporter A brother-in-law of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is under investigation after he allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage girl at his home in Ottawa, Canada, last week. Police were called to the home of Simbarashe Reward Marufu, a second-ranking diplomat at the Zimbabwean high commission in Canada, on October 5. They summoned […]

THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa warned on Thursday that it will embark on a programme of “rolling mass action” to protest ongoing job losses in the metal industry that could see 6 000 workers retrenched this month. Numsa president Mthuthuzeli Tom said that 11 industries, including Denel, the Steel Engineering Industry Federation […]

Paul Kirk Jonty Sandler, one of South Africa’s most high-profile businessmen, could inexplicably not be found when police attempted to execute a warrant for his arrest for alleged rape, and he remains a free man a month later. “The warrant should have been executed. If someone is to be arrested then he must be arrested […]

Hilary Fine Lifestyle After life winds you up, you need to wind down. Stress can kill you, and to stay healthy you must find ways to de-stress. You are in need of serious self-help! Somewhere between the frenetic rat race of nine-to-five living and the solitary peace of a hermit, there is an equilibrium and […]

Much as he cared about the proletariat, Karl Marx – named Thinker of the Millennium – was beset by his own struggle supporting an ailing family in genteel poverty. In this extract from the biography of the year, Francis Wheen discovers Marx the man Karl Marx was born a bourgeois Jew in a predominantly Catholic […]

ROSS Veenstra struck twice in the first three overs of the day’s play to seemingly put Natal on the road to dominance. But mediocre support bowling and a defiant 71 not out from Praveen Amre helped Boland muster 91 runs for their last three wickets. Then Mark Bruyns and Doug Watson took off at the […]

Robert Kirby Channel vision ‘The petrol price has gone up with 60c since the beginning of the year. If it will reach the R3 mark at the end of the year …” intones SABC television news reporter Joanne Roodt. “One of eight people accused are being charged,” whines Nadia Levin from deep inside the tornado-chic […]

Fiona Macleod A campaign similar to the one which saved the Brenton Blue butterfly from extinction is being mounted to protect a rare butterfly species in Gauteng’s premier nature reserve complex. The Heidelberg Copper, so named because of the golden metallic sheen of its wings and its discovery at Heidelberg in 1959, is threatened by […]

Aaron Nicodemus Most baby albums begin with a picture of a tiny baby held proudly in the arms of a tired mom. But Pieter and Mandy de Graaf’s pictorial record of their twins starts with fertilised eggs. The couple are among the few South Africans who can afford to overcome infertility. Because it is expensive […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bloemfontein | Friday 11.45am. VICTOR Mpitsang’s figures of 3-49 off 22 overs may not be spectacular, but hidden in them is the fact that Gary Kirsten and Jacques Kallis were among his victims. Kirsten was caught behind for 17 – a solid enough piece of bowling but nothing memorable. Not so Kallis’ dismissal, […]

Adam Mars-Jones LADYSMITH by Giles Foden (Faber &Faber) Giles Foden’s admirable novel emphasises the modernity of the Boer War by including the media in his cast of characters: not merely war correspondents, but also a cameraman, “the Biographer”, who captures events in moving images. Foden’s great-grandfather was a British trooper at Ladysmith, and copies of […]

alien’ Marianne Merten The Aliens Control Act was used to arrest international fugitive and American embassy bombings suspect Khalfan Khamis Mohamed and deport him to the United States. Mohamed applied for permission to stay in South Africa pending an application for political asylum under the false name of Zahran Nassor Maulid. New York-based FBI representative […]

South Africa’s judiciary reacted angrily this week to suggestions that parliamentarians could hold them accountable for their judgments. We too are concerned that politicians should not undermine the independence of the judiciary. But that independence should not be an excuse for those judges who continue to propagate old South African values and political prejudices. How […]

IN his first season after leaving the Wanderers, 23-year-old Neil McKenzie scored a career best 166 not out (321 balls, 19×4, 3×6) as the Northerns Titans had McKenzie’s old team on the rack after the first day of their four day Supersport Series match at Centurion Park on Thursday. Together with Gerald Dros (94), McKenzie […]

Gavin Evans in London English Premiership When I ask my South African friends what they think of Lucas Radebe they tend to come up with words such as “underperformer”. A Johannesburg lawyer chum of mine said, “The odd thing about Radebe is that he doesn’t look so good in Bafana Bafana.” Until very recently, the […]

The Centre for Development Enterprise is committed to a strong role for the state in creating the environment for growth and development, says Ann Bernstein In his attack on the Centre for Development Enterprise (CDE) publication Policy Making in a New Democracy: South Africa’s Challenges for the 21st Century, Jeremy Cronin misrepresents the CDE’s conclusions […]