Staff Reporter

Donna Block : Share World Two nations united by history but divided by destiny, India and Pakistan are like estranged sisters fighting over the same man. They have fought three wars, two of them over the disputed region of Kashmir, and have displayed their nuclear capabilities. This long-running feud is affecting the stability and economic […]

When Federico Andahazi wrote a novel about the clitoris, Argentines were scandalised – and women rushed to buy it for their husbands. Maya Jaggi reports Every discovery is arrogant, says Federico Andahazi, and possibly none more so than that charted in his remarkable novel The Anatomist. At its heart is a real Renaissance scientist from […]

Sending a peacekeeping force is no longer an option for restoring calm to Maseru, as armed soldiers and civilians prepare to repel the force from the kingdom. Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Howard Barrell report Brigadiers in the Lesotho Defence Force have assumed effective control of the country following the complete collapse of the civilian and administrative […]

In New York you get whipped, in Thailand it’s real sex, but in Zimbabwe you just stock up on fantasies. Mercedes Sayagues meets the Warriors I don’t know what turns you on. But I know what turned on 500 Zimbabwean women last week: the muscular, sculpted bodies of six young South African hunks as they […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 3.30pm. THE Zimbabwean central bank on Friday refused to publicly release its long-awaited report into collapsed “indigenous” bank of Roger Boka. The central bank instead passed the report on the collapse of Boka’s United Merchant Bank on the the justice ministry and police officials. It is thought that the report […]

Ferial Haffajee The production house Urban Brew will not take its new-look breakfast television show for SABC2 to air as planned. The launch date has been delayed by at least a fortnight, reportedly because Urban Brew is not yet ready to broadcast. The breakfast contract is the SABC’s most lucrative. Worth R40-million, the pitch for […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 9.45am. THE meeting called by National Assembly Speaker Frene Ginwala on Friday morning to discuss Thursday’s fisticuffs in Parliament has ended with Ginwala saying she gave all parties a copy of video footage of the fracas and gave them until Monday to decide what action to take. The meeting, […]

David Shapshak Kabuki theatre, one of Japan’s most ancient and revered art forms, comes to South Africa for the first time this weekend. Renowned Kabuki actor Satojiro Wakayagi will perform the famed kagamijishi dance (the lion of new year’s banquet) at Sandton’s Theatre on the Square on Sunday night. Kabuki is quintessentially Japanese. A highly-stylised […]

James Rupert in Kinshasa Three generations of Andre Miku’s family live in the concrete-block compound they have built over decades around a dirt yard and a mango tree. Of 11 people who live here, none has a formal job. Miku (70), a retired mechanic, receives a government pension of $7 a month. The family rents […]

Peter Dickson A scam dubbed “Aircon” is the latest corruption scandal to rock the Eastern Cape legislature. On Tuesday, Eastern Cape legislature speaker Gugile Nkwinti announced that the secretary of the legislature, Connie de Beer, and finance director Bej Fatuse have been forced to take leave, pending investigation into allegations that they illegally converted R300 […]

Chiara Carter The Pan Africanist Congress is spelt “Pat” in several townships and platteland towns in the Western Cape. PAC MP Patricia de Lille’s involvement in bread-and-butter issues is helping the party make inroads into coloured communities in the Western Cape – and attract a handful of white members. This weekend the PAC will launch […]

The United Nations last week called for urgent action to raise the living standards of the world’s poor after disclosing that a billion people have been left out of the consumption boom of the past two decades. In its annual Human Development Report, the UN said gross inequalities between rich and poor countries were getting […]

There was occasion for thanksgiving this week, on the release from Mozambique’s Machave prison of Robert McBride, although there is something of a puzzle as to who should be thanked. Not the African National Congress, few members of which turned up at Johannesburg International airport to welcome him home and thereby claim the credit. Under […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 11.45am. SUNDOWNS were stunned on Saturday when they went down 2-1 to Bloemfontein Celtic in a shock Premier Soccer League defeat at the Free State Stadium. Sundowns missed many opportunities that could have seen then take the match, but Celtic opened the scoring in the 25th minute through Stoffel Nikane […]

Brenda Atkinson : On show in Johannesburg Looking at two Johannesburg exhibitions recently, it occurred to me that the position of the art critic – and of some artists – is increasingly one of impossibility. This is because one of the ironies of globalisation, transnationalism, and all those other terms that would suggest the dissolution […]

Ann Eveleth Six northern KwaZulu-Natal police officers received jail sentences this week for torturing an African National Congress- aligned community activist and his relatives. Magistrate Amanda Venter handed down the ruling in a tiny civil courtroom in the Empangeni Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, nearly two-and-a-half years after members of the Mtubatuba-based public order policing unit […]

Andrew Worsdale The French, arguably, invented cinema, although there is some contention that Thomas Edison was the founder. Either way, thanks to brothers Auguste andLouis Lumire, cinema became part of daily life with screenings at Paris’s Grand Caf in 1895. Frenchman George Mlis, probably the first cinema artist, developed special effects to create a pantomime […]

Tony Twine According to the cautionary tale, Goldilocks may well have been the archetypal consumer who fell foul of a bear trend. In search of that elusive economic entity, a free lunch (or was it breakfast?), she unleashed a sequence of events which left her at the mercy of the bears – quite a depressing […]

Alex Dodd : CD of the week If, like me, you’re the kind of person who likes drifting into the realm of nod to strains of sweet music conjuring images of women in fuschia muslin and marble palaces on Indian lakes, Deepak Ram is the maestro you’ve been looking for. A pupil of the great […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday7.00am. WESTERN Cape attorney-general Frank Kahn on Friday indicated he would not accept assault charges laid by either of the two MPs involved in Thursday evening’s punch-up in Parliament, because he has no jurisdiction over the institution. Speaker Dr Frene Ginwala has full jurisdiction over any offence committed in Parliament, […]

Mail &Guardian reporter Spatial Development Initiatives (SDI’s) have created 518 investment opportunities valued at R115,4 billion – with the potential to create 118 000 new jobs – across South Africa. By June this year, 144 of these projects, with an investment value of around R31- billion and the potential to create more than 32 000 […]

Howard Barrell : Over a Barrel One of our stranger habits as South Africans is to imagine the rest of the world owes us a living. It is not a feeling many readily admit to. It is more an underlying conviction which governs much of our political and economic behaviour. We did once represent a […]

Angella Johnson : VIEW FROM A BROAD `Isn’t it great how you can get just about anything on the Internet these days,” says Gail Bentel cheerfully. We’re not talking about ordering a pizza. Bentel has run a cat-breeding business, made friends around the world, bought a house and found her dream man while surfing the […]

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 […]

Richard Cornwell and Jakkie Potgieter Propaganda claims to the contrary, there appears to be a relative lull in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the various forces regroup and resupply, while the deteriorating weather makes the large-scale movement of mechanised troops increasingly difficult. This provides a breathing space in which the region’s […]

Demutualisation hopes have lost their shine in the wake of turmoil in the financial markets, writes Belinda Beresford You could be forgiven for confusing the huff and puff over demutualisation with the sound of the gravy train pulling in for a lucky few. Since last year, the financial world has been talking up the conversion […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]