Staff Reporter

Nevanji Madanhire The farce goes on at Town House, seat of the Harare City Council, but the government is reluctant to fire executive mayor Solomon Tawengwa. The city is tottering on the brink of collapse and all fingers point to one man. Recently, half the city went without water for three weeks and a quarter […]

Andy Capostagno Golf The finest tribute that anyone could hand to the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge is that since South Africa emerged from international isolation, it has got better. That is no small feat. Consider the crowds who used to flock to Newlands for the traditional festive season Currie Cup cricket match between Western Province […]

Planning your retirement is your responsibility, writes Michael Metelits The dream of retirement is to spend your golden years savouring life and doing things you never had time to enjoy when working – the soft-focus approach favoured by advertising agencies. But a prerequisite is enough money, otherwise you can fall into a grim and grey […]

Five pairs of tickets can be won in the Mail & Guardian’s Bee Gees competition. All you have to do is answer this question: What are the Bee Gees first names? To respond call (011) 726-8098 between 6pm and 7pm on Friday November 27 for your tickets that will be valid for November 28.

Chiara Carter A campaign to fight xenophobia and raise awareness about refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants is to be launched next month. The campaign is part of a three-year strategy drawn up by a consultant commissioned by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). It is being spearheaded by the National Consultative Forum on Refugee […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.00am. HOME Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi had an extremely close relationship with the notorious Bureau for State Security (Boss) during a decades-long collaboration with apartheid-era security structures, according to explosive in-camera testimony presented to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This testimony “leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week” was […]

Hector Petersen’s name is synonymous with the 1976 riots, but what happened to the man carrying him in that famous picture? Andrew Worsdale reports Director Feizel Mamdoo’s startling documentary What Happened to Mbuyisa? is the first South African movie to be invited to participate in the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the most prestigious event […]

Friday night: Dave Chislett Ten years ago, much against my will, I spent two hormone-fuelled years in Port Elizabeth completing my high school career. As a Johannesburg boy, recently transplanted to the coast, I hated the place. My nickname for it at the time was PE-nis by the sea. Now, my good friend Hagen Engler […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 7.15pm. COURTNEY WALSH swept past Malcolm Marshall’s record for most Test wickets by a West Indian when he produced a superb display of fast bowling on the second day of the first Test against South Africa at the Wanderers Friday. Walsh took four for 48 as South Africa reached 217/6 […]

Fine art: Brenda Atkinson The relationship between the private sector and the arts in South Africa has not traditionally been characterised by a spirit of mutual largesse: corporates regarded artists as garret-based idealists, while artists saw suits as conniving Thatcherites with philistine aesthetic inclinations. The terrain, however, has shifted notably in the past few years, […]

amnesty decision Wonder Hlongwa A man who ordered the killing of more than 50 people has been appointed a lieutenant colonel by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) – before the amnesty committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has decided whether he will be granted amnesty. The amnesty committee will only rule on […]

Andy Colquhoun in Dublin Rugby Imagine being lightly beaten about the body with baseball bats while running a 10km race – a race that you have to win – and you may have some idea of the mental and physical threshing machine through which the Springboks seem to have been passing every Saturday since the […]

Sharon Hammond A support group for abused men has been established in Swaziland, which is regarded as one of the most macho countries in the world. Reaction to the Swaziland Association for the Protection of Men (Sam) has been mixed since reports first hit the Internet this week. “What a load of crap!” wrote one […]

jail Ferial Haffajee The only son of Freedom Front leader Tienie Groene- wald, is in jail in Lisbon facing espionage charges. Pieter Hendrik Groenewald, a former rightwinger and Wit Wolf – a spent far right-wing organisation – was re- arrested in August soon after being released after a failed extradition attempt by the South African […]

Maureen Barnes In 1996 Paarl tour guide Cathy Raymond picked up a small group of American tourists for a trip round the winelands. The visitors asked if she would take them to visit a shebeen in Mbekwene township. “I didn’t know how to find a shebeen,” said Raymond, “so I phoned Jongi Frans.” Frans, who […]

The David Gleason Column The great conundrum for all South Africans as the year winds down is what will happen to interest rates and why are they still so incredibly high. Before May this year, international investors saw South Africa as one of the more reliable and stable of the emerging markets. They invested heavily, […]

Charl Blignaut Oom Paul Kruger’s statue has stood for 44 years on Church Square in Pretoria, watching nothing changing at all. Unlike Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s bust on Red Square, he may survive the shake-up planned for the capital’s inner city. If all goes according to plan, Oom Paul will find himself in the centre of […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Agusta, the company which won a R2,2- billion contract last week to supply the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) with 40 A109 helicopters, has been implicated in a multimillion- dollar corruption trial in Belgium. The company has been accused of bribing politicians in an attempt to win defence contracts. Last week it […]

heat It was bound to happen sooner rather than later: before it has even got around to setting an official date for next year’s general election, the government is sending out signals that it wants the “political heat” taken out of the electoral process and that it requires the services of the more compliant sectors […]

Donna Block: SHARE WORLD Just when you thought it was safe for a little dip in the world’s financial waters it appears that those sharks of Wall Street, the hedge funds, are preparing a new feeding frenzy. Hungry after a three-month absence from the international investment scene, the funds are hunting for opportunities to engorge […]

directorate Stuart Hess South Africa’s first black female gynaecologist, Nothemba Simalela, will become the new head of the national Aids directorate on World Aids Day next Tuesday. A senior lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa), Simalela replaces Rose Smart. Smart said she is leaving as director because she […]

SOCCER: Rothman’s cup final, Sundowns vs Chiefs Andrew Muchineripi The safest bet before the Rothmans Cup final between holders Kaizer Chiefs and Sundowns at FNB Stadium on Saturday is that Amakhosi coach Paul Dolezar will take longer to choose his team than counterpart Ted Dumitru. Suspensions rule defender Jacob Tshisevhe and wingback Lifa Gqosha out […]

A new history of South Africa could engender controversy. Author Frank Welsh spoke to Anthony Egan The great British historian EH Carr said that a crucial way to understand history was to understand the historian. The life of Frank Welsh – businessman, banker, boatbuilder – tells us much about his book. A History of South […]

Mail & Guardian reporters The South African Police Service (SAPS) has 1 500 policemen on its staff who were convicted of criminal offences in the past 17 months. More than 50 serving policemen have been convicted of assault in the first half of this year. And the SAPS believes attempted sodomy by one of its […]

I was recently asked whether REM had made any other albums like 1992’s beauty, Automatic for the People. That moody, ballady hit album had a carefully worked quasi-acoustic surface that made it sound almost mainstream. Trouble is, REM tend not to repeat themselves very often. Out of Time, the album before Automatic for the People, […]

Mungo Soggot A legal and political battle looms over the rights of South Africans suffering from asbestos-related diseases to claim compensation from British asbestos companies in United Kingdom courts. The claims promise a transformation of the lives of thousands of South African workers. But their lawsuits could be thwarted by legislation in Britain outlawing such […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby This looming Christmas is, of course, the second last of both the present century and millennium. There also remains little over a year until the founder of the Christian religion hits that big ol’ double whammy and becomes the religion’s first 2 000-year-old Saviour. As He starts His penultimate Y2K lap, […]

Chiara Carter Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s brother is one of the missing African National Congress guerrillas whose fate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to establish while probing human rights abuses committed at the ANC’s notorious Quatro camp. Commissioners at an in-camera hearing earlier this year questioned General Andrew Masondo, the former ANC Angola commissar, […]

There were so many irritating presumptions in Joan Smith’s column, “Why women don’t cruise” (November 13 to 19), that it’s difficult to know where to begin to protest them. Shaun de Waal’s response in last week’s First Person took a considered look at the implications of Smith’s article for the nature/culture debate, but was, in […]

Jardine Howard Barrell There is growing concern in government circles over the extraordinary public attack this week by the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Lionel Mtshali, on his Director General, Roger Jardine, who recently announced his resignation. In a statement from abroad on Wednesday, where he is on a visit, Mtshali implied that […]

In the third report of his series on transformation, John Matisonn examines changes in the media after 1990 In the SABC’s radio archive, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s first speech on his return to Russia in 1917 survived 46 years of apartheid censorship. Lenin’s speech was still in the files in February 1994 when, after the SABC’s […]

Ferial Haffajee At the front line of the corruption battle in Gauteng, Barbara van Jaarsveld has bagged a rotten principal. Her quiet schoolmarm demeanour gives way momentarily to a victorious grin. The principal will be charged for renting out his school’s electricity to 10 surrounding shacks. “He ran extension chords from the school and charged […]