Staff Reporter

A hard-hitting exhibition in Rotterdam examines South Africa’s built environment. Ferial Haffajee was there The landscape of the next millennium in South Africa will overwhelmingly be the landscape of an apartheid past. The physical form of this new country is yet to be made. Now and for the next years it will remain a space […]

Belinda Beresford Assuming the near-mythical millennium bug doesn’t wipe out your bank account or erase all traces of you in your pension fund, handling money in the year 2000 will have moved on more than a little from the start of this century. Cheques, notes and even coins are going the way of the gold […]

Criminals are using the instability in some countries to build crime networks inside the state, write Stephen Ellis and Batrice Hibou What do Russia, India, Italy, Nigeria, Turkey and Colombia have in common, apart from the fact that they are all sovereign states with seats at the United Nations? All of them have allowed professional […]

David Sharrock This is where Christendom began, and where it is ending, for Bethlehem at least, and, perhaps, for the Holy Land also. In a gloomy cave beneath the basilica of the Church of the Nativity is the spot where the Virgin Mary is supposed to have given birth to Jesus. If it wasn’t for […]

LOOSE CANNON: Robert Kirby Despite the seasonal rush, it arrived just in time to top-up their Christmas hampers. From humble purse-snatcher, through rapist, murderer, fraudster and paedophile, to international car-hijack operative, the members of the South African criminal community are fair yowling with yuletide gratitude as they welcome yet another priceless gift brought them by […]

A FIVE-year-old girl who went missing on a farm near Porterville in the Western Cape on Sunday was found on a neighbouring farm on Thursday. She apparently spent four nights on her own in the bushes next to a river. After searches by farm workers and police failed, two brothers on a neighbouring farm found […]

A `necessary pretence’ seems common practice in politics worldwide. David Beresford wonders if South Africa will suffer the same fate The most intriguing aspect of Thabo Mbeki’s recently released collection of speeches (Africa, the Time Has Come, Tafelberg Mafube, R80) is not the speeches, but the introduction which contains a brief biography of the man, […]

Finding a cure for Aids may take years, but the medical fraternity is attempting to stop the spread of the disease, writes Stuart Hess While the world looks forward to a future in which infertile couples can have children via genetic cloning, and people with missing limbs can be given fully functional robotic hands, arms […]

knowledgeable you really are How clued up are you on the highs and lows, ins and outs of 1998? Test your skills with this brain-teaser 1 President Nelson Mandela made a special concession to pay the lawyers of an infamous politician more than double the going rate to prepare for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission […]

RUGBY Andy Capostagno It is always harder to stomach defeat when it is unexpected. It is like living on a diet of milk and honey and then being sent to bed with a spoonful of castor oil. But Christmas is a time for giving, so how appropriate that the Springboks should end their tour of […]

1 PW Botha 2 Philippe Troussier 3 Gauteng’s provincial Premier Mathole Motshekga 4 Renamo 5 The Northern Cape’s Manne Dipico 6 Hlengiwe Mkhize 7 Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats 8 Moeneeb “Bowtie” Abrahams and Leonard “Chippie” Archilles of the Hard Livings gang, Jackie Lonte of the Americans, Ismael April of the Mongrels, to name […]

joker Stephen Bierley One of the most compelling images in tennis during the closing decade of this century was one born of loss. In the 1993 Wimbledon women’s singles final, and leading 4-1 in the third set, Jana Novotna dramatically crumpled to defeat against Steffi Graf and then, unable to contain her emotions, wept lingeringly […]

Free State Matthew Krouse Some feelings cannot be explained, they just have to be absorbed. For a Jew, like me, to meander through a small town in quest of the Christmas spirit on a sweltering Sunday feels quite odd. Even if the town is called Bethlehem, and the Sunday happens to be five days before […]

At the age of 102, Sholipi Mbutu has outlived all but one of her children, writes Swapna Prabhakaran Not many people remember Sholipi Mbutu’s name. At 102, she’s been an old woman for so long, everyone calls her Gogo. Mbutu lives with her daughter in a tiny house 40km from the coastal town of Kwambonambi, […]

Do anthems wear out their appeal and need replacing to suit new conditions? James Ambrose Brown examines South Africa’s three anthems that tell the tale of the century For the English it was God Save the Queen, and Land of Hope and Glory. For the Afrikaners it was Die Stem van Suid Afrika. For the […]

Things are looking up for the local film industry, writes Andrew Worsdale At this year’s Sithengi, Cape Town’s film and video market, Zimbabwean producer Joel Phiri said of South African cinema: “There’s a lot of cinema, but there’s not much on the screen.” Sithengi is, of course, one of the many strong initiatives that have […]

Patricia Whitelock Perhaps it’s because we have 10 fingers and work on a decimal system that numbers and intervals of time like 10 and decade, 100 and century or 1 000 and millennium seem to have such significance. This probably explains the interest in the beginning of the new millennium, but not the controversy associated […]

There is nothing like the stroke of a pen to lighten a presidential load. United States President Bill Clinton not only lit White House intern Monica Lewinsky’s fire, he was also every cartoonist’s dream come true. A plethora of phallic symbols was sketched, like Zapiro’s version of Airforce One. One US cartoonist went for the […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 4.30pm. SLIGHT gains on most JSE indices were offset by massive losses on the all gold composite, while the rand and bonds were steady or up on Wednesday. The day was marked by light trading and overshadowed by International Monetary Fund’s declining fears of global recession. The international lender indicated […]

the game Australian cricket is in turmoil. (Yes, Australian cricket.) But were Waugh and Warne merely following a global trend? Matthew Engel on how batting and bowling became betting One day during the recent Adelaide Test between England and Australia, my taxi- driver was a migrant from Malaysia. His English was indifferent, and conversation difficult. […]

censorship were over? Brenda Atkinson As the second Johannesburg Biennale limped into the early weeks of 1998, it seemed for a while that post- international-schmoozing stress disorder might have taken the tart out of art. Fatigued by working, networking, or just plain complaining, contemporary artists countrywide curled into introspection for the first half of the […]

report card NELSON MANDELA President Grade: A Few people in recorded history have been the subject of such high expectations; still fewer have matched them; Mandela has exceeded them. We knew of his fortitude before he left jail; we have since experienced his extraordinary reserves of goodwill, his sense of fun and the depth of […]

Best South African avant-jazz album:A tie between Zim Ngqawana, for Zimology – a burning free-blowing session -and Moses Molelekwa, for Genes and Spirits, where jazz pianistics meet the new era of drum’n’bass. And praise be to Sheer Sounds and MELT 2000, who recorded them. Best South African commercial jazz album:Paul Hanmer’s smoothly and confidently laid-back […]

Andrew Worsdale With at least a week of rest and relaxation ahead, why not unwind in front of the big screen? With a host of movies opening over the next fortnight, there’s something for the whole family. The teen movie I’ll Be Home for Christmas heads the list. Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of Home Improvement fame) […]

Andy Capostagno Cricket The West Indies lost the second Test so badly that logic dictates the only way is up. But cricket is not always a logical game, even if it is sometimes extremely predictable. There has been talk of regeneration, but it would take an optimist of Pollyanna proportions to believe that the third […]

A is for Artistic Atrocities against Humanity. Foremost on this year’s list must be the SABC-commissioned production Avenues that had such an unfathomable plot and such putrid camera work that, after much public outrage, it was shifted from its prime time slot on Mondays at 9pm to late on a Sunday night. B is for […]

currency Martin Walker in Brussels looks at what the coming year holds in store for Europe The last year of the millennium is for Europeans the first year of the new order. Everything changes, starting with the birth of the single currency and the launch of the German presidency of the European Council. If the […]

The technology of the future may seem like science fiction, but it’s more than just talk, writes David Shapshak In the home of the future, people will talk to the walls. And the walls will listen. You’ll walk into your home, it will greet you, turn on the lights, select your current favourite music or […]

Ferial Haffajee If Anna Stoffberg lives for another year, she will earn the rare distinction of seeing in the start of two centuries. “I am a hundred-and- something,” says the wizened woman from her bed in a tiny council flat in Eldorado Park, a former coloured township near Johannesburg. The flat is home to 10 […]

I have been a regular reader of your newspaper since it began and many are the pages from it which have been stapled to the walls of my multicultural classrooms. You consistently present alternative positions to generate debate and discussion. Over time, though, questions arise for which we don’t appear to be able to find […]

Peace and goodwill to all – it is the message of Christmas that inspires people of every religion. But there has been fighting this month in Bethlehem on the West Bank, the cradle of Christianity. Mail & Guardian correspondents fanned out from Namibia to Jamaica, from Wales to the Free State, to discover the spirit […]

Wally Mbhele interviews the Mail & Guardian’s newsmaker of the year, Robert McBride On a cold morning on April 9, South Africans woke up to what was to become one of the biggest thrillers of the year: the arrest of a senior government official in a foreign country. The official was none other than the […]