Staff Reporter

The CSIR has developed a unique system to prevent prison escapes, reports David Shapshak An innovative, low-cost motion detector system could be the solution to preventing the hundreds of escapes each year from police cells, say the police and its developers, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The new system consists of two […]

Etienne van Heerden’s most recent novel has been translated into English. He spoke to Shaun de Waal With the translation, one by one, of Etienne van Heerden’s novels (and a volume of stories) into English, his status as a major South African writer is becoming clearer to a larger audience. His multi-prize-winning Toorberg, translated as […]

Dave Hill: FIRST PERSON When the British High Court heard earlier this week that former airline pilot James Williams’ “life had been destroyed” by the failure of an operation to give him back a foreskin, some might have suspected a degree of overstatement. Some – but not an awful lot of men, especially if they’ve […]

Preview of the week: Anton Marshall `Hey, have you heard of Renaissance?” I ask experimentally, honestly believing the hype that clubbers are in and slacker journos are out. “Er … Wasn’t that a Leonardo da Vinci painting?” she replies innocently, sipping on a Mule as her low- key rave vest struggles to find a cling […]

Robert Mattes: A SECOND LOOK The details of the first Opinion ’99 survey (a consortium of Idasa, Markinor and the South African Broadcasting Corporation) have been widely reported. But once one backs away from the fine brush strokes of the numbers, what emerges is a distinct picture of the South African electorate six to seven […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD `Please let him touch your breast. They’re beautiful and he loves breasts,” pleaded the light-skinned black woman sitting on a sofa beside me and my partner. Her boyfriend, a bespectacled German engineer, was draped over the side idly plucking at my suspenders. In a room down the hallway of […]

rewards 30 years on David Gough from Nairobi As Kenya prepares to celebrate 35 years of independence next week, veterans of the guerrilla army who fought a brutal campaign against British colonial rule say that they have been rewarded with nothing but poverty and hardship, and have nothing to celebrate. Hundreds of survivors of the […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Senior executives of The Saturday Star and The Sunday Independent were this week informed of plans to collapse their newspapers under the editorial control of The Star. Executives were shown paper plans of the new arrangements which are part of the profitable Independent Newspapers group’s plans to retrench staff and dramatically […]

Andrew Hawks Enna Kayopa has never heard of the new drugs that are offering a future for so many Aids patients in Europe and North America. She lives in a village in rural Zambia, in Southern Africa. She will be dead before triple combination therapy is available through the public health care system here. After […]

Gregory Mthembu-Salter French President Jacques Chirac looked particularly pleased with himself when he announced progress towards a ceasefire in the Congo at the Paris Franco-African summit last week, but in reality the chances are slim. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Laurent Desire Kabila, resumed his fighting talk immediately after the Paris discussions. Rebels in […]

Chiara Carter Two separate Day of Reconciliation ceremonies will be held at Blood River where the government is hosting a R800 000 feast to mark the opening of a new memorial to Zulus who fell in the battle. On one side of the drift that divides the Afrikaans and Zulu memorials, Afrikaners will commemorate the […]

Mungo Soggot Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin has denounced a Mail & Guardian report two weeks ago that his officials demanded cash cheques from companies attending a banquet. In a letter to the M&G, Erwin says: “No Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) official has ever asked for cash cheque payments.” He has […]

Alex Dodd SOUTH AFRICA THE STRUCTURE OF THINGS THEN by David Goldblatt (Oxford University Press) THE INVISIBLE LINE: THE LIFE AND PHOTOGRAPHY OF KEN OOSTERBROEK by Mike Nicol (Kwela/Random House) This year has been a big one for photographer David Goldblatt. Not only did he become the first South African photographer to be honoured with […]

Peter Dickson Early next year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty committee will ask a feared ex-security policeman if guns smuggled from Mozambique were used to kill hundreds of people in the Transkei killing fields of Tsolo and Qumbu. TRC spokesperson Vuyani Green said controversial Superintendent Frans “Lappies” Labuschagne, withdrawn from the Robert McBride […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Police in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, including Alexandra, may have found the right ointment for their Achilles heel – carjacking. The men in blue have cut by half hijacking incidents in the past three months with an innovative crime- fighting initiative. The new plan circumvents the usual excuses about lack of manpower and resources. […]

Alex Sudheim There’s a point in the closing song of no more heavy that serves as a rough telescope through which to view Sunways’ music as a whole: Standstill is a spooky, minimal song for most of its six-minute duration which suddenly detonates with explosive force. It’s 4am inertia blues until it takes a hit […]

Sundowns Andrew Muchineripi Soccer When Durban assistant referee Tiny Chandermoney raised his flag to signal a “goal” by Joel Masilela of Sundowns offside last weekend he could hardly have imagined just how big a storm he would stir. My mind went back in time to the late Liverpool manager Bill Shankly and his remark that […]

DAVID LEGGE, Johannesburg | Friday 1.15pm. GOAL-hungry Angolans Premiero de Agosto stand between Esperance of Tunisia and a place in the African football record books on Sunday. The clubs meet at the Citadela Stadium in the Atlantic Ocean city of Luanda with the North Africans defending a 3-1 lead from the first leg of the […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Athol Fugard may have been writing about inhabitants of the electricity department’s disused building in downtown Johannesburg had the characters of his People are living there not been too few and employed. The inhabitants of the building belonging to the Market Theatre Company – where Fugard’s play premiered in March 1977 – […]

My department and I were disturbed by the leader story in your last week’s edition entitled “Trade Officials Solicit R10 000 for `Free’ Dinner”. The article suggests that some untoward activity and abuse of funds has been practised by DTI officials. Even facts in the story don’t substantiate the allegations. The facts are: l The […]

us) Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE As millions in America sat down to their Thanksgiving turkey dinners last week, we celebrated a shamelessly mythologised reconstruction of our continent’s history. According to the well-ingrained but now-disputed legend, the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving was communal in spirit, a demonstration of the debt they owed the native Americans who taught them […]

ANN EVELETH, Johannesburg | Friday 1.00pm. KWAZULU-Natal’s new director of public prosecutions, advocate Mokotedi Mpshe, took office on Tuesday ahead of a disciplinary hearing that could result in his being struck from the roll. Mpshe, who faces seven counts of professional misconduct in a Pretoria Bar Council disciplinary hearing which is set to resume on […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.45am. BORDER’s opening batting pair of Brad White and Craig Sugden put their team in the healthy position of 103 without loss at lunch on the opening day of their three day fixture against the West Indies at Buffalo Park in East London. Border earlier won the toss and elected […]

The David Gleason Column The arrival in South Africa of a major North American gold company gives further emphasis to the extraordinary changes which have taken place in this country’s mining industry in the past five years. After months of negotiation, it was announced this week that Vancouver- based Placer Dome, already among the world’s […]

Jane Rosenthal VERLIESFONTEIN by Karel Schoeman (Human & Rousseau) The grave of a young war hero killed in an Anglo-Boer War skirmish is what the narrator of this novel, an historian, is looking for. He and his photographer are heading for a cemetery in a Northern Cape dorp. Although the narrator dismisses as limited the […]

Friday night: Nashen Moodley Being a Durbanite recently arrived in Johannesburg somehow necessitates being constantly regaled with tales of malicious muggings and wanton violence. The locals seem to take to this (supposedly educative) task with much glee and I was told, quite matter-of- factly, that I would be attacked before the weekend was out. The […]

Andy Colquhoun Rugby Let us pause before the dogs of war are loosed at Twickenham on Saturday to consider the game’s most important personality. A person who won’t even be on the field. If South Africa were to miss out on their bid for a rare Grand Slam – and for all the bullish talk […]

no African renaissance’ Despite its limited resources, South Africa stands to gain by developing its own HIV vaccine, instead of waiting for the West to provide, writes Lesley Cowling More than 25 clinical trials of different types of vaccines against HIV – the virus that causes Aids – are under way all over the world. […]

DENIS BARNETT , Sun City | Thursday 9.00pm. ZIMBABWEAN Nick Price, chasing his third million dollar prize here, mastered the blustery conditions to lead the Million Dollar challenge in Sun City by two shots overnight. Price’s first round 67 took him clear of the chasing pack of Mark O’Meara, Justin Leonard, and Bernhard Langer — […]

A new survey shows that South African women are more likely to be killed by their partners than by strangers. Tangeni Amupadhi reports To reach her Lenasia home, Yasmin Fakir walks across a field where there have been several rapes and murders. But it is only when she opens her front door that she feels […]

Herman Charles Bosman’s work is now all being reissued in a definitive edition. Craig MacKenzie describes his work on Mafeking Road Recently, as the editor of the journal English in Africa, I published there for the first time a remarkable exchange of letters between the post- war giants of South African letters – Herman Charles […]

answered Jann Turner Friday: After a month, I have a whole day off. I’m ready for a day paying off bills. I’m feeling strong, so I start with the post office. Eventually I get to the service-with-a-scowl teller and I pay my phone bill. I’m two-and-a-half weeks late, but hell, that’s not long – is […]