Staff Reporter

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

Rugby is enjoying an unlikely revival in the West Indies, reports Paul Weaver The sound of a competitive rugby match came as a surprise to those wandering the green expanse of the Queen’s Park Savannah, the world’s biggest roundabout, which is the pounding heart of Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain. This is the homeland of […]

THE United Democratic Movement in Gauteng on Thursday called on all political parties to sign a pre-election peace pact. At a service in Johannesburg for slain UDM KwaZulu-Natal midlands leader Sifiso Nkabinde, Gauteng UDM leader Lulama Mshumpela said: “In order to have a violence-free election in this province I call on all political parties to […]

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 – […]

THE second journalist captured by rebels in Sierra Leone capital Freetown was freed on Wednesday. Spanish journalist Javier Espinoza said he was surprised to have been freed, who had held him for two days. Espinoza, a reporter for the daily El Mundo, was detained with French reporter Patrick Saint-Paul on Monday when they crossed into […]

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. […]

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 […]

More and more South African artists are climbing on the video bandwagon, but Conrad Welz has been at the forefront of the genre for many years, writes Lauren Shantall `It’s about a sensory mind fuck,” says pioneering South African video artist Konrad Welz of his work. No doubt his uncompromising stance played some role in […]

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 […]

THE second round of voter registration kicked off around the country at 9am on Friday, despite this week’s resignation of Independent Electoral Commission chief Judge Johann Kriegler. Registration will continue on Saturday and through Sunday. Only about a third of potential voters registered in the first round at the end of November. If insufficient voters […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

AN Wilson FAYED: THE UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY by Tom Bower (Macmillan) One of the most richly enjoyable incidents in this extraordinary story occurs in September 1964. Papa Doc, the Haitian tyrant, has engaged a young but illustrious Kuwaiti sheikh to rebuild the harbour in Port-au-Prince. The sheikh tries to persuade some British oil experts that there […]

DENIS BARNETT, Richmond | Thursday 5.30pm. ARMY and police were deployed in force on Thursday as the United Democratic Movement held a memorial service for its assassinated leader Sifiso Nkabinde. The Methodist service, held at a school 400 metres from Nkabinde’s home in his Magoda township stronghold near the KwaZulu-Natal town of Richmond, heard angry […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

Two weeks ago, having served an 18- month ban for biting a lump out of Evander Holyfield’s ear, Mike Tyson won his comeback fight with a single blow that shattered the hopes of all `right- thinking’ boxing fans. But whatever his crimes, and however unbalanced he may be, there are those who feel he is […]

Chiara Carter The Democratic Party is anticipating further defections by New National Party politicians following its stunning defeat of the NNP in an area which for decades was a stronghold of the former National Party. The Kraaifontein municipal by-election on Wednesday saw DP candidate Fanie Jacobs win 531 votes, as opposed to 364 votes cast […]

ANGOLA called on Thursday for the United Nations to publish results of its enquiry into the June plane crash which killed UN envoy Alioune Blondin Beye. Beye spent the last two years of his life mediating in Angola’s peace process between the Luanda government and Unita rebels. He was killed last June when the light […]

Zimbabwe has joined the grim club of police states, writes Mercedes Sayagues Zimbabwe’s government is showing its true colours, and the hue is the olive green of a military dictatorship. In the past two weeks, basic democratic principles have been crudely disregarded: the military declared itself above the law and institutional torture reared its ugly […]

testicles and electrodes Some men have always been ready to try anything to stay potent. However, the pseudo-scientific approach to ageing began only a century ago. Charles-Edouard Brown-Squard, a French doctor, announced that he felt 20 years younger after injecting “extract of fresh guinea-pig and dog testicles”. Within a year, 1 200 physicians were administering […]

early John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF I know it is almost February, and the year is ticking by, but I have just woken up to the fact that it really is 1999. That the Y2K madness has officially been allowed to take over as a substitute for logic in our times, that Nelson Mandela is […]

This week’s Mail & Guardian comes with a new set of features designed to make Africa’s best read even better. l Writer, movie director and semi- retired actor John Matshikiza kicks off a new column, With the Lid Off. Those with long memories will remember this was the title of the regular column his father, […]

David Shapshak In countless B-grade science fiction films, the villain was foiled in his attempt to shoot the hero with his own gun because the “smart” gun would only allow itself to be fired by the rightful owner. For the technophiles, this was explained as the gun having an embedded sensor that read the hero’s […]

bloodshed Chris McGreal The KwaZulu-Natal town of Richmond is bracing itself for another bout of bloodshed this weekend with the funerals of assassinated United Democratic Movement secretary general and warlord Sifiso Nkabinde and those killed in a revenge attack on an African National Congress family attending a funeral vigil. Nkabinde’s right-hand man and probable successor […]

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 […]

Ann Eveleth A Zambian student committed suicide after his South African boarding school expelled him and booked a ticket to send him home without informing his parents. International School of South Africa (Issa) principal Ed Khabele said he told lower sixth form student Tabo Mwenechanya (18) at a disciplinary inquiry on October 31 that he […]