Staff Reporter

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Anew Viking anthology commemorates Nadine Gordimer’s 75th birthday. She spoke to Peter Godwin With the tentative tread of the dancer she once wanted to be, Nadine Gordimer steps noiselessly down the stairs from her afternoon nap. Dressed in black, she sits, taut as a sparrow, elbows on knees, chin on fists. She is quick to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Robin McKie It is the Holy Grail of physics, and it has eluded scientists for the past 30 years. Now researchers believe they are on the threshold of detecting the most elusive force in the cosmos: gravity waves. But if they find the waves do not exist, that would still be significant: it would prove […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The rector of Technikon South Africa (TSA), Adriaan Buitendacht, is paid an annual salary of nearly R1-million. And he is scheduled to get a salary increase next year. Discontent is running high among workers, labour unions and senior staff at TSA about the “purported extravagant” salaries paid to top management, especially […]

Ann Eveleth A white Hartebeespoort landowner staged a hunger strike this week to force the conservative local council to kick-start low-cost housing for about 50 000 black residents of this picturesque getaway outside Pretoria. Broederstroom smallholder Roger Roman launched his lone hunger strike and sit- in in front of the Hartebeespoort council offices on Wednesday. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00pm. SPRINGBOK hooker James Dalton may not make the starting line-up for the Springboks in their rugby Test against Ireland at Lansdowne Road after injuring a hamstring during practice on Thursday. Dalton injured the muscle on Tuesday during a gym session in Cork, but trained with the team on Wednesday. […]

ROB DAVIES, Johannesburg | Wednesday 10.30am. THURSDAY heralds the first South African cricket Test against the West Indies at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, and as tour openers go, none can be more important than this. The tour has been called the most important since South Africa’s return to international cricket, and with good reason. Brian […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Thursday 4.30pm. ONE would be forgiven for thinking the Johannesburg Stock Exchange lacked a pulse on Thursday as it all but shut down as the United States markets closed for Thanksgiving. A miserably thin volume at R667-million left the all share index 0,08% up, with the all gold index gaining 0,43%. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 5.00pm. THE South African government’s decision to go on a massive arms shopping spree has sent out “an enormous signal” that it is serious about playing peacekeeper, Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils s on Thursday. “If we had put this decision off … I would say the perception out […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Geneva | Wednesday 10.10am. RWANDAN Hutu rebels have turned to drug trafficking in order to finance their military operations in the Great Lakes region of Africa, according to a United Nations report issued in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday. The report said ex-soldiers of the Hutu nationalist regime ousted in 1994 after one of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 12.15pm ZIMBABWE has announced the launch of an eastern offensive in the Democratic Republic of Congo by allies of President Laurent Kabila. The Zimbabwean government said on Wednesday morning that “allied air force planes” inflicted heavy casualties and extensive damage to enemy targets in the Lake Tanganyika area over the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Ulongwe | Wednesday 9.30am. SOUTH African scientists believe they have made a major breakthrough in the long battle against African Swine Fever with a Mozambique-based programme to develop pigs’ resistant to the killer virus. The scientists say a herd of such pigs could be used as breeding stock which in time could replace […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 11.00am. THE government has agreed that South African Airways will take responsibility for R1-billion of Transnet’s pension fund deficit and debt, laying the groundwork for SAA’s partial privatisation and balance sheet restructuring. Business Day reported on Tuesday that the government and Transnet will absorb SAA’s remaining R3-billion portion of Transnet’s […]