Staff Reporter

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer The first indication that it was going to be no walkover for Bafana Bafana in Mauritius came about five minutes before the kick-off of the drawn African Nations Cup Group Four qualifier at the ramshackle King George V Stadium. Mauritian captain Jean-Marc Ithier was a picture of grim determination during the pre-match […]

Tangeni Amupadhi A policeman is to testify against three colleagues accused of beating “People’s Poet” Mzwakhe Mbuli last week. Sergeant Maraka Lesika said he saw three other policemen assault Mbuli, but he refused to give details of what he witnessed. Mbuli laid charges of assault and crimen injuria at the Lyttelton police station in Pretoria […]

Impinging, as it does, on the font of the new South Africa, the row between Judge Johann Kriegler and the government over the organisation of the next general election is obviously a matter of major concern to the country. But we cannot help but fear that it is symptomatic of an even wider and more […]

The winner of the Mail & Guardian and Madam& Eve: It’s a Jungle out There competition is Georgina Pickett of Pretoria, who wins an original full- size Madam & Eve cartoon and a signed copy of their new book, It’s a Jungle out There. The 10 runners up are: Dan Naidu of Scottburgh, Tsholanang Thekiso […]

FURTHER flaws in the identity parade involving robbery accused “people’s poet” Mzwakhe Mbuli were exposed on Thursday in the Pretoria High Court. Not only was Mbuli significantly taller than all those standing with him, but an Inspector Christiaan Theunissen who was involved in his arrest was present at the identity parade against regulations. Theunissen, despite […]

A FIFA team is inspecting hotels in eight Nigerian cities to decide if they are good enough to be used at the World Youth Cup in April, organisers said on Thursday. Nigeria ’99 spokesperson Paul Bassey said the three-member Tournaments Accommodation Committee team will be joined by another delegation on Saturday for a final inspection. […]

Duncan Mackay Juan Antonio Samaranch used to dream of winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). He pointed proudly to having eliminated the hypocrisy of “shamateurism”, put the games on a firm financial footing and, through diplomacy and globe- trotting, ended the political boycotts of the […]

As the West Indies wind up their humiliating cricket tour of South Africa, they have very little hope of regaining their lost grandeur of the Eighties, argues Cameron Duodo No one will feel as devastated by the 5-0 whitewash of the West Indies by South Africa more than Windies captain Brian Lara. Lara ran into […]

Mark Tran in New York John Meriwether, the head of stricken hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, recently accused big Wall Street firms of preying on his company when it lost millions last year, in the hope of buying up his firm on the cheap. He was speaking in public for the first time since […]

PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s wife, Graa Machel, received an award on Thursday from the Council of Europe’s North-South Centre in recognition of the role she has played in protecting human rights and democracy. The 1998 North-South Prize was to be handed over at a ceremony in Strasbourg, France, during the Council of Europe’s parliamentary session. Machel […]

William Leith A MONK SWIMMING by Malachy McCourt (HarperCollins) In Angela’s Ashes, the bestselling autobiography by Frank McCourt, Frank’s younger brother Malachy appears first as a grimy urchin, and then as an older version of one. In A Monk Swimming, the younger brother’s memoir, Frank flits through the action in a correspondingly sensible, buttoned-up fashion. […]

Making just one of the millions of proteins we manufacture every day involves copying the recipe from DNA, ferrying the building block to a kind of biological knitting machine, threading the blocks into a chain, folding the chain into complex shapes and finally adding various chemical identity tags. At every stage, things can go wrong. […]

David Shapshak and Joyce Barrett The Cape Town Olympic bid team knew an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member was “available to the highest bidder”, but it did not make use of this information to influence the bid. Caught up in the biggest corruption scandal of the IOC’s 105-year history, disgraced Swaziland IOC member David Sibandze […]

Marianne Merten and Chiara Carter Police and politicians anticipate that the audacious bomb blast which hit Cape Town on Thursday will provide impetus to calls to provide police with additional powers to combat urban terrorism in the Western Cape. The blast has made a mockery of Operation Good Hope which was launched this week – […]

Alex Dodd:LANDMARKS `How will this ancient blood-soaked earth make its story felt today?” I am wondering. It is 4.30am and we’re driving into a storm. Violent streaks of lightning shoot through the pre-dawn darkness, illuminating the R23 that leads to Dundee. >From Dundee we will drive through the small town of Nqutu and take the […]

Motel Jonathan Romney There have been a few changes round the homestead. There’s a new neon sign out front, and the poky old fruit cellar has been refurbished as a place where you could get down to some serious taxidermy. They’ve even replaced the shower curtain in Cabin 1. Otherwise, life is much as it […]

Park Sechaba ka’Nkosi The government’s land reform programme may be challenged in the Constitutional Court by two Northern Province clans. The Mhinga Traditional Authority, acting on behalf of the Maluleke and Vanwanati clans, cannot reclaim lost land under the Restitution of Land Rights Act because they were dispossesed before 1913. The Act confines claims to […]

Belinda Beresford Perhaps it’s the scars of a wild youth, the aftermath of a delinquent spouse or the legacy of mismanagement of your money. But a bad credit record can have unpleasant repercussions, including failure to get a bond, credit card, store card, cellphone – all the trappings of a relatively affluent South African. It’s […]

Chris Dunton ENCOUNTERS: AN ANTHOLOGYOFSOUTHAFRICANSHORTSTORIES selected and introduced by David Medalie (Wits University Press) It’s true, I guess, of many, many short stories that they revolve around some kind of encounter – for that brief span of telling, a meeting, a conjunction, a confrontation is ideal to get the stuff of the story moving. But […]

NIGERIA’S former finance minister Olu Falae huddled with advisers on Thursday after he became the first official candidate for the Nigerian presidency and the flagbearer of the south-west based Alliance for Democracy (AD). The radical leftist AD is one of three parties running in the polls, alongside the rightwing All Peoples Party and centre-left Peoples […]

Wally Mbhele Embattled Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa is set to be discharged of his duties next month as premier and African National Congress provincial chair when the party meets to finalise its list of parliamentary candidates. The ANC committee investigating the causes of infighting among ANC heavyweights in Mpumalanga – which is scheduled to complete […]

David Shapshak A ground-breaking new antibiotic has been discovered by a team of scientists based in Knysna, the latest in a series of innovative South African medical discoveries from natural sources. The potentially powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic is a molecule extracted from a South African plant species, says Greg Gilbert, a chemist who directs the scientific […]

The collapse of Tollgate, the Cape- based conglomerate of which Julian Askin was chair and principal shareholder, and the subsequent examination into its failure have produced one of the most torrid, unpleasant and seamy corporate chapters in South Africa’s history. Formerly a South African resident, Askin mixed a career as a journalist with occasional stockbroking. […]

WALLY MBHELE, Johannesburg | Friday 10.30am. EMBATTLED Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa is set to be discharged of his duties next month as premier and African National Congress provincial chair when the party meets to finalise its list of parliamentary candidates. The ANC committee investigating the causes of infighting among ANC heavyweights in Mpumalanga — which […]

SOME 120 projects worth over $561,3-million were committed to Maputo province in Mozambique during 1998, the Mozambique’s Centre for Investment Promotion said on Thursday. The centre said that South Africa is the largest single direct investor into Mozambique, accounting for 180 projects worth $762,3-million. Portugal is the second largest foreign investor, with 225 projects worth […]

Dan Wylie TERRIFIC MAJESTY: THE POWERS OF SHAKA ZULU AND THE LIMITS OF HISTORICAL INVENTION by Carolyn Hamilton (David Philip) The fact is, we know almost nothing certain about Shaka – not even what he looked like: one Zulu informant, from our most extensive oral-history source, the James Stuart archive, claims he was short and […]

Coenraad Visser Opera as unashamed extravaganza. That is what the audience can expect when Operama’s production of Verdi’s Aida is presented at the Minolta Loftus Superstadium on Saturday night. Verdi’s moving love triangle is set in ancient Egypt. It tells the simple story of the love of Aida, daughter of the Ethiopian king and prisoner […]

George Hazeldon believes his proposed self-sufficient community will solve South Africa’s crime problem … for some. Chris McGreal went behind the electric fence George Hazeldon likens his vision to Mont St Michel, the ancient French monastery and fortress. Detractors dismiss the British property developer’s scheme as a fool’s paradise. Either way, the contracts are rolling […]

The Market Precinct is a-jive with an electric fusion of Southern African sounds. Ramotena Mabote tunes in to Mahube `A new dawn” and new band that’s living up to it’s epic name. That’s Mahube: a whole new musical movement born out of a collaboration of sounds, cultures and beats. It came to life right here […]

Cuban music’s local cult status is soaring with the re-release of some legendary jam sessions by Cuba’s greatest musos, writes Peter Makurube Born of a country in which politics and passion are the order of the day, Cuban music has always enjoyed cult status in South Africa. But its following grew to massive proportions last […]

The family of Scottish immigrants who set up jiu-jitsu in Brazil still dominate the world’s toughest fighting art, writes Alex Bellos >From Robert the Bruce to Trainspotting’s Frank Begbie, the Scots have earned a reputation for their terrier-like fierceness. So it comes as a comforting proof of the stereotype that the man who created the […]

Widow Product:BLACK WIDOW V3.63 by SoftByte Lab If you’ve gone through the tedious process of trying to save an entire website on to your hard drive file by file, you probably got the jitters thinking about your telephone bill. And if you discovered afterwards that suddenly all those images you painstakingly saved cannot be viewed […]