Staff Reporter

LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Delmas | Tuesday 9.30pm. THE country’s top criminal psychologist, police deputy director Micki Pistorius, has been sent to the small Mpumalanga farming town of Delmas this week to speed up investigations into a suspected serial killer in the region. Police have recovered three severed heads and three headless bodies, not neccessarily matching, from […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00pm. A ZAMBIAN high court judge who is trying 77 coup plot suspects has threatend to release all the accused if the Zambian government fails to improve their prison conditions, Zambian press reports said on Monday. Prosecution lawyers were on Saturday ordered by Judge Japhet Banda to arrange improvement of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 4.00pm. EFFORTS by United Nations special envoy Issa Diallo to meet with Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi are being thwarted by the government’s stated inability to guarantee his safety, leaving him effectively stalled in the capital, Luanda. The country’s peace accords negotiated four years ago in Lusaka, Zambia, are threatened […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Monday 5.00pm. MOST markets moved in thin trading Monday, as the Jewish New Year and the impending public holiday on Thursday kept volumes down. In a local trading vacuum, international pressures directed market activity, and the news out of Asia was bad, as the Nikkei plunged over 350 points and other […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday 9.30pm. FORMER apartheid security policemen planned to shackle South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo to a steel ring in a basement on a farm outside Pretoria, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty committe heard on Tuesday. Craig Willaimson, a former apartheid spy who has applied for amnesty for his […]

THE current global financial crisis calls for a complete rethink of the world’s economic systems, President Nelson Mandela said.

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 9.30pm. REPRESENTATIVES of Lesotho’s opposition parties were locked in discussions in Maseru on Monday night in an attempt to find a suitable venue for a meeting with the Lesotho government on the political crisis in the country. Opposition part coalition spokesman Vincent Malebo said that he hopes the parties will […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Friday 5.00pm. LOCAL stock dragged through Friday to close slightly softer ahead of the welcome weekend. Dealers described the day as dull and directionless, with under R1-billion volume traded. Dealers said the calm is fairly typical after a futures close-out, and most dealers were squaring their position ahead of the weekend. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Monday 9.30pm. DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila has named a commission to review a report on constitutional change. Kabila, who hand-picked the members of the commission himself, said he was forced to abandon plans to present the study to parliament by “exceptional wartime circumstances”. The 12-man institutional reform commission […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday 4.00pm. THE two members of Parliament who engaged in a fist fight on the floor of the National Assembly last Thursday were suspended from Parliament on Monday. Eastern Cape National Party leader Dr Manie Schoeman, who has admitted to landing the first blow, was suspended from Parliament for five […]

LEONARD NDZHUKLA, Delmas | Monday 7.30pm. A MAN who decapitated a young girl in Delmas, Mpumalanga, in 1990 has escaped from Weskoppies mental asylum and is believed to be on the loose in the small farming town. Police told African Eye News Service on Monday that Johannes Mohale-Monareng may be linked to three heads and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape TownLEONARD NDZHUKLA, Delmas | Monday 7.30pm. THE National Assembly has approved legislation designed to co-ordinate government’s approach to environmental management. However Environment Minister Pallo Jordan has agreed that it is a watered-down version of what was originally envisaged. Democratic Party MP Mike Ellis said that the National Environment Management Bill is a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 8.30pm. THE three year talks between the European Union and South Africa over a sweeping free trade agreement fell through on Friday over the issue of concessions for agricultural products. The failure comes just days after both sides expressed hope that the three years of tough talks would be wrapped […]

CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg | Sunday 8.30pm. ROBERT McBRIDE will brief the Cabinet and African National Congress leadership about what he was doing when he was arrested in Mozambique in March, according to ANC legal chief Mathews Phosa. Phosa said on Saturday that the Cabinet has assigned Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi to deal with […]

Marthali Brand : First Person `That’s incredible. I would never be able to do that.” That’s the first thing most people say when they hear that I am a volunteer at a care centre for children with Aids. The second thing is: “Isn’t it tough to know that those children are going to die?” I […]

After hundreds of years of research, the molecular spark that triggered life still puzzles scientists, writes Paul Davies In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster is brought to life by a bolt of electricity. This procedure fitted in with the 19th-century view that living matter is somehow distinct from non-living matter, and that an organism […]

Peter Frost In a union which typifies the new reality of economic pressure on the arts as well as calls for broadening of artistic horizons, members of Gauteng’s State Theatre Ballet and the Cape Town City Ballet (CTCB) will join forces on Saturday night at the Nico Opera House for the first time. Dancers from […]

Max Hamata and Thokozani Mtshali The flesh trade has found a niche on campuses across South Africa, but not because students are impoverished and battling to pay fees. Peer pressure to wear the latest brand of clothing and carry the smallest cellphone has prompted many young women into selling their bodies. A 23-year-old third-year business […]

Belinda Beresford Careless use of your credit card could mean you are making your bank an interest-free loan. If you fail to pay your total credit card debt each month, your bank may charge you for the full outstanding amount – even if you have made a partial payment. Say your statement says you have […]

Ferial Haffajee Emigration lawyer Hilliard Kassel is laughing all the way to the bank. He jokes that the only reason he stays in South Africa is because his skill in helping people to leave is in such demand. Based in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the bespectacled lawyer is at the cutting edge of the migratory wave […]

More disillusioned MPs are expected to defect to the Democratic Party, writes Howard Barrell As the Democratic Party increasingly assumes the mantle of unofficial leader of the opposition in Parliament from the ailing National Party, a number of MPs from other opposition parties are expected to jump ship in coming weeks. Only the timing of […]

Chiara Carter Bitterness lingering after the choice of Gerald Morkel over populist Peter Marais to replace Hernus Kriel as leader of the National Party and premier in the Western Cape is likely to resurface at the party’s regional conference next week. Marais is understood to have been pressured by grassroots supporters to contest the elections, […]

It is as much of a pleasure to talk to Julian Joseph as it is to listen to his music, writes Charles Leonard There must be a factory where they make guys like young British jazz pianist, Julian Joseph. He is the third bright young(ish) thing I’ve interviewed on visits to South Africa facilitated by […]

Ferial Haffajee A Pretoria branch of the Democratic Party is known as the armed wing of the party – or Umkhonto weDP – because its members have so much firepower. Among the diverse membership of the Centurion branch are former generals, colonels navy officers of the old South African Defence Force and 12 members of […]

The voyeurist counsel Mail & Guardian reporter There is a certain irony in the fact that the independent prosecutor who reportedly sings hymns on his morning jog and keeps a calendar with daily scripture verses at home should be the author of the United States’s latest publishing sensation. The 440-page report produced by Kenneth Starr […]

Jim McClellan There has been no shortage of books about computers over the past few years. Politicians, academics and journalists have all spun out utopian or dystopian techno- visions. But programmers – the people responsible for making this technology work – haven’t produced any grand globe-spanning theories about the heaven or hell on Earth they […]

Chris McGreal : Spending It This month Rwanda launched a national lottery to raise much-needed revenue. But this is a numbers game which blends aspects of a good old-fashioned lottery – where luck reigns supreme – with betting on the horses. The scheme was born of desperation. The government had tried scratch cards as a […]

Swapna Prabhakaran Environmentalists and researchers from around the world converged on Durban’s International Convention Centre this week to share ideas on global air pollution. It was the first time the World Clean Air and Environment Congress, holding its 11th conference, has been held in Africa. It provided an opportunity for valuable information exchange, bridging the […]

David Conn : English Soccer English football has been transformed so rapidly in the last few years, from a game millions paid cheaply to watch on ramshackle terracing, to an activity which can make 100-million for one man like Martin Edwards, that it is difficult at times to make articulate sense of isolated developments. So […]

RobertKirby : Loosecannon I would like to express my gratitude to Kader Asmal for his good-natured response (“Kirby should look before he leaps”, September 11 to 17) to a column of mine in which I suggested he needed a wake-up call on the matter of the Dukuduku forest – or what is left of the […]

ballet It will soon be Brazil’s second most popular sport … and it’s not entirely dissimilar to the first. Alex Bellos heads for Rio’s beaches to uncover the burgeoning cult of futevolei One of the most romantic myths about Rio de Janeiro is that its famous beaches are full of barefoot urchins dazzling passers-by with […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kuala Lumpur | Thursday 9.00pm. FIFTH-year medical student Frantz Kruger took Games silver in the discus on Thursday night, in the Bukit Jalil Stadium in Kuala Lumpur. Kruger, hot from a personal best throw of 65,73m at the International Athletics Federation World Cup in Johannesburg, threw 63,93 on his sixth throw to come […]