Staff Reporter

A blind photographer. It sounds like a joke, or a novelty turn. But though Aids has robbed John Dugdale of his sight, he is still producing outstanding work, writes Ben Widdicombe John Dugdale lives in one of New York City’s prettiest streets, a curving brownstone avenue lined with lazy trees and 100-year-old town houses. The […]

Harriet Lane NOTES FROM A BIG COUNTRY by Bill Bryson (Doubleday) Bill Bryson, an American who settled in North Yorkshire and wrote – affectionately and very successfully – about the vagaries of the British, appears to have moved back to the States almost by accident. Having written 77 Mail on Sunday columns about the eccentricities […]

Phillip Kakaza The morning sun glitters over Mount Mautse in the eastern Free State. Cocks crow from its majestic slopes and the jungle drums telegraph a mystic rhythm. Welcome to the holy mountains, where people since the early 1970s have been going in hundreds to pray to their ancestors and to God. Ideally situated in […]

axe Mungo Soggot and David Shapshak Wits University axed Ron Clarke, the palaeoanthropologist responsible for last week’s sensational fossil find in Sterkfontein, despite receiving several written pleas from eminent international scientists to keep him on. Three top fossil academics based in the United States have confirmed they attempted to persuade the university to reconsider its […]

for that `good feeling’ Peter Makurube In her neighbourhood, even a child can lead you to Margaret Singana’s home. The singer once known as Lady Africa has not been on stage in a long while, but the people of Zola still treat her with the deference of old. When disaster struck, Margaret Singana was at […]

Andy Capostagno Cricket There were many reasons to be cheerful if you were a South African in Port Elizabeth last Saturday. The national side had just beaten the much vaunted West Indies by 178 runs to go 2-0 up in the five Test series and there was much back slapping and cheery chat about the […]

Tangeni Amupadhi A band of robbers and kill-ers is terrorising African immigrants in Johannesburg in what appears to be a systematic elimination of the foreign nationals. The latest casualty was Djo Ongonga Okamba from Brazzaville, the capital of Congo. He was shot dead last week, days before he was to leave for his home town. […]

Fiona Macleod A deal being hammered out with the southern Kalahari Bushmen will entitle them to jointly own and manage more than 1 000km2 of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in the Northern Cape. It will also add about 500km2 on to the park. If the deal goes through – and there are indications it […]

Wonder Hlongwa It’s that time of the year again, and in many townships in and around Gauteng people are preparing for boomfires. A boomfire is a huge flame made from a tall dry tree ringed with old tyres and set alight on New Year’s Eve. While the tree and tyres burn for the whole night, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Friday 5.00pm. UNITA rebels shelled the town of Malanje in northern Angola early on Friday, Catholic radio station Ecclesia reported. Several people in two neighborhoods were reported injured in the attack. On Thursday evening several shells landed within a kilometre of the governor’s residence in Malanje and dozens of civilians were […]

doubts Sechaba ka’Nkosi Former Transvaal attorney general Jan d’Oliveira confessed his doubts about the state’s case against the Eikenhof Three to the Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed as early as last September. However, exactly six weeks later, D’Oliveira surprisingly revoked his earlier stance, citing “certain consultations” and said he would oppose any application for remittal D’Oliveira […]

Inside Out, a new local film, seems to have got it the right way round in terms of financing and filming, writes Andrew Worsdale `This movie marks a turning point in the local industry.” This was the less- than-original prophecy on everybody’s lips at the recent bold and upbeat launch of the new SABC3/ African […]

Sanctions against Burundi are falling away, writes Gregory Mthembu-Salter Sanctions imposed by East African countries against Burundi in the wake of the military coup in July 1996 are nearing their end. Of the six original participants, Kenya, Ethiopia and Zambia abandoned sanctions months ago and the Rwandan government believes their usefulness is over, leaving only […]

Eikenhof Three … Bryan Rostron Both Judge Piet van der Walt’s response to the Eikenhof Three bail application and the disarray of evidence in the scandal display uncanny similarities to the many notorious miscarriages of justice that came to light in Britain during the 1990s. In cases such as the “Guildford Four” and “Birmingham Six”, […]

Blessed with prodigious acting gifts, and an Oscar to prove it, and cursed with a terrible liking for drink – now long overcome – he is one of the great British stars. Gaby Wood on a Welshman who conquered his weaknesses and the world Anthony Hopkins says he’s having the best time of his life […]

campuses Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The African National Congress’s main student ally, the South African Student Congress (Sasco), is losing its grip on campuses across the country. Freedom Front-aligned parties recently won student representative council (SRC) elections at the former Sasco strongholds of Pretoria University, the University of South Africa and the Pretoria Technikon. The […]

On the first day of Christmas the taxman sent to me an exhaustive tax inquiry. On the second day of Christmas my lawyer sent to me, two final demands and an exhaustive tax inquiry. On the third day of Christmas Woolworths sent to me, three maxed accounts, two final demands and an exhaustive tax inquiry. […]

Robert Mattes: A SECOND LOOK As reported recently (“The ANC and the seven dwarfs”, December 4 to 10), voter surveys have revealed increasingly large proportions of voters who might be persuaded to vote differently than they did in 1994. The first Opinion ’99 survey in September 1998 revealed that 56% of all potential voters now […]

For organised crime in Asian betting scams, read artistocratic mega-punters in English sport 250 years ago. Gambling scandals are nothing new – especially in cricket, write Kevin Mitchell and Luke Tansey Any suspicion that there is a mole in the England cricket team leaking confidential information of varying quality and relevance to an illegal bookmaker […]

Andrew Worsdale The Great Escape, a fascinating documentary airing on SABC1 at 6.30pm on Sunday December 20, tells the story of the famous Marshall Square jailbreak in 1963 where activists Arthur Goldreich, Mosie Moolla, Charlie Jasset and Harold Wolpe managed to persuade warder Johan Greef to let them out with the promise of payment. Greef […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 6.50pm. THE South African “A” team which meets the touring West Indies at the Pietermaritzburg Oval on Saturday are certain to be in for some fireworks. The team, skippered by Gauteng wicketkeeper Nick Pothas, is woefully underprepared for the near-Test situation and half the team will only arrive in Pietermaritzburg […]

political home Chiara Carter The National Party in the Western Cape looks set to lose several key politicians to the Democratic Party. The big prize is former education MEC Martha Olckers, set to leave after first being deposed as a provincial Cabinet minister and now featuring low on the regional lists. A number of other […]

Wally Mbhele has been appointed assistant editor at the Mail & Guardian. Mbhele (35), who hails from Bethlehem in the Free State, has been a political correspondent at the M&G since August last year. Trained at The Weekly Mail, he has worked on a number of publications including Vrye Weekblad, New Nation and City Press […]

Sean O’Brien CHARLOTTE GRAY by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson) With Charlotte Gray, Sebastian Faulks completes a trilogy begun with the slim inter-war romance The Girl at the Lion d’Or and substantiated by the large and massively popular Great War novel Birdsong. The new novel takes us to World War II, to Vichy France, the various fractious […]

jail? If ever there was a case which exposed the shortcomings of the police, the prosecution service and the judiciary, it is that of the Eikenhof Three. The facts in support of their innocence have yet to be tested in court but, to the reasonable man, appear overwhelming. Their fingerprints were never found on the […]

Jim McClellan surfs his way to spirituality on the Web Looking to live up to the proclamations of business experts, who have declared that this Christmas online shopping will cross over to the mainstream (at least in the United States), Net retailers seem to be going all out to exploit the seasonal spirit. However, there […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Faisalabad | Friday 5.00pm. HEAVY fog has wiped out play for a second day in the third and final cricket Test between Pakistan and Zimbabwe Friday. The home team did not turn up at the stadium at all while the tourists left the stadium after lunch when the umpires called off the day’s […]

Ratanga Junction – `the first full- scale theme park in Africa’ – opened its doors to a fun-hungry public this week. Dave Chislett dared to ride the Cobra roller-coaster As one approaches the main gates to Cape Town’s Ratanga Junction the first feelings of unreality begin to set in. I mean, how many people do […]

Howard Barrell: OVER A BARREL What’s in a word? Probably not a great deal more than the user puts into it. The idea of rigid definitions is discredited, and the way in which a word is commonly used is little more than a rough guide to its meaning. So it is often not easy to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 5.30pm. SOUTH Africa have won the Mandela Cup friendly match against Egypt by 2-1. After closing the first half on one goal each, the second half got off to a slow start, with the pace broken by several substitutions on both sides. There were a couple of missed opportunities on […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 5.15pm. WEST Indies manager Clive Lloyd claimed injuries, illness and attitude problems have brought about the West Indies’ dismal showing in South Africa so far. After seven matches on tour, the West Indies have yet to register a win, even in one-day games against invitation teams, and trail 2-0 against […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 11.00am. THE University of South Africa (Unisa) has reinstated Namibian academic Joe Diescho who was gagged and demoted after being accused of publicly criticising the university. A commission of enquiry originally found that the decision by former principal and vice-chancellor, Marinus Wiechers, to axe Diescho was “legally and morally incorrect”. […]