OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 7.00pm. PAULA McBride, the wife of jailed foreign affairs official Robert McBride, on Friday placed an advertisement in the press appealing for financial assistance for her husband’s legal costs. McBride on Friday said her husband’s legal costs have already run over $50000. The South African government has refused to pay […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 9.45pm. DYNAMOS of Zimbabwe maintained their impressive home record against Nigerian clubs with a 3-0 victory over Eagle Cement in an African Champions League Group A match in Harare on Sunday. The win takes Dynamos to the top of their pool on goal difference from Etoile du Sahel of Tunisia, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 3.30pm. CABLE & Wireless, the United Kingdom’s second largest telecommuncations group, is to sell its 25% share in MTN to Johnnies Industrial Corporation (Johnnic) and Transnet for 257-million — R2,75-billion, C & W announced on Thursday. Johnnic will buy 74% of the C & W shares and Transet 26%, pending […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 9.30pm. CAPE Town magistrate Johan Venter, presiding over the inquest over the 1996 lynching of Hard Livings gang co-leader Rashaad Staggie on Friday warned the media against prejudicing or pre-empting inquest findings. Venter’s statement was in reaction to negative media reaction to an announcement by Advocate Willie Viljoen on […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday 9.15pm. A GERMAN grant of 28 mini-satellite terminals has boosted the setting up of a communication network linking the defence forces of the 14 members of the Southern African Development Community, the SA Army said on Thursday. A telecommunications working group of the Inter-State Defence Security Committee, comprising representatives of […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 6.00pm. PRIVATE television consortium Midi is reportedly embroiled in fall-out between shareholders over equity and mounting tension at senior management level, just over a month before it is set to launch its free-to-air television, e.tv, on October 1. Unconfirmed reports on Friday indicated that some key players of the consortium […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pietermaritzburg | Thursday 7.00PM. THOUSANDS of African National Congress members in KwaZulu-Natal have marched to the offices of the KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally to demand his resignation. Members of the SA Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions also joined the march. The protesters handed a memorandum to the Deputy […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Friday 11.00am. SOUTH African hammer thrower Chris Harmse, who is the African record holder in the event, won the gold medal at the African Athletics Championships in Dakar, Senegal ,with a throw of 72,11m on Thursday night. Nigerian competitors dominated on Thursday, with Clement Chukwu and Falilat Ogunkoya doing a double […]
Stewart Dalby Spending it Travel literature is a field in which the collector would seem spoilt for choice. The variety is vast: exploration, seafaring, biology, outer space, anthropology, derring-do, geography, geology and meteorology. Some people collect modern tourist guides while others collect rare 16th- century books about how the world was first circumnavigated. What would […]
Ron Sakolsky is an academic, journalist and activist whose main interest is the cultural politics of music. He’s not a serious musician although he “dabbles” in several instruments. Sakolsky is visiting South Africa until the end of the year. While he is here he plans to interview Mzwakhe Mbuli in jail to talk about his […]
The government’s economic policy will not be debated at the forthcoming jobs summit, writes Howard Barrell The government has beaten off the threat of a direct public challenge to its economic policy at the presidential jobs summit now due to take place before the end of October. This is another setback for embattled leftwingers in […]
Ann Eveleth Gauteng residents will have a “legal obligation” to care for their elderly parents, and could face fines of up to R50 000 or up to five years’ imprisonment if they are found to be “negligent”. This is one of the proposals of the Securing the Future for Gauteng’s Elderly Bill – one of […]
Zwelithini ka Mvelase Uncompromising winter’s sun blasts its ultraviolet rays into my eyes as we swing into the Hector Petersen Square, Orlando West, for a presentation to Soweto of an art work titled Hector Petersen Mosaic, by the late activist/artist Theo Gerber’s wife, Susie. It’s Sunday in Soweto, Donny Hathaway’s soul classic Children of the […]
Gill Moodie A giant iceberg that has been lurking in the southern ocean for 12 years is making its way north from Antarctica, firing scientists’ dreams of mining icebergs for freshwater. Bigger than the Cape Peninsula, the iceberg known as Atlantic 22B, was formed in September 1986 when a massive piece of ice broke off […]
It’s been a long hot summer for Russian markets and just when relief appeared to be on the way with an International Monetary Fund (IMF)bail- out package of $22,6-billion, a new wave of panic sent the already brutalised financial markets into a tailspin. Economic fallout from the Russian crisis could spell political trouble. For European […]
Neil Manthorp in Birmingham Cricket At last, some justice. The final moment of any significance, the last memory of the tour of England, was positive. Not just the victory, but the catch by Jonty Rhodes in the covers. So often we see great feats of athleticism diminished by the television replay. Occasionally they remain untarnished, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT | Friday 2.45pm. THE United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution to suspend sanctions against Libya pending the arrival of the two Lockerbie bombing suspects in the Netherlands for trial. The resolution, designed to pressure Libya into sending the suspects to the Netherlands as soon as possible, also threatens additional […]
Mail & Guardian reporters The Natal High Court handed down a landmark judgment in favour of press freedom last week when it denied an application by the Inkatha Freedom Party to gag the Mail & Guardian. The IFP launched a two-pronged attack on the newspaper last week, applying to the court to stop the M&G […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 7.00pm. AN inquest into the murder of Cape Flats drug-lord and gang leader Rashied Staggie, on Thursday heard evidence in Cape town that the group responsible for his death, Pagad, at the time considered the murder to be a military operation. A police operative Captain David Africa told the […]
Alex Sudheim On exhibition in Durban Upon arrival at the NSA Gallery, each spectator/participant is given a sheet of paper bearing words: random fragments of random texts. Mine says: “The summer air”. The person next to me gets something in Zulu. Someone else’s says: “Why?” Shortly thereafter, German artist Angelika Flaig collects all the papers […]
MONSTER MACHINES by Caroline Bingham (Dorling Kindersley) This book describes 12 different types of the “biggest, heaviest, chunkiest machines on the move”. These include a Boeing 747, a giant mining shovel with a mass of 240 tonnes and an enormous mobile crane with 18 wheels. The text is very simple and quite devoid of technical […]
Jon Qwelane Right to Reply The trouble with the Mail & Guardian’s editor and his small coterie of executives is their apparent obsession with the fallacy that they hold copyright on what is true and correct. Pontificating from their lofty ivory tower, they seem to have forgotten (or actually never even knew) two simple points: […]
Sechaba ka Nkosi A controversial deal brokered between the SABC and MultiChoice to alter satellite television in South Africa has been put on ice. The move follows a detailed protest memo to the broadcasting ministry from the SABC’s main signal distributor, Sentech, and a series of meetings among stakeholders. Questions have also been raised about […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 3.00PM. POLICE raided six computer retailers in Durban and Cape Town this week, uncovering counterfeit software — mainly sourced from Asia — worth R4,5 million. Attorney Marco van der Merwe, who acts for the Business Software Alliance, said on Friday: “This was a very sophisticated counterfeit product. It would […]
The April 30 to May 7 edition of the Mail & Guardian carried a report headlined `NP leader in bizarre sex probe’. The National Party laid a complaint with the Press Ombudsman, Ed Linington, who decided on the matter last week. This was his decision: It is understandable that the National Party and its leader […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Premier Soccer League chief executive officer Trevor Phillips has tried and failed to reduce the size of the 18- club Castle Premiership, the richest national championship in Africa. This week, his South African Football Association counterpart, Danny Jordaan, tackled the same problem from a different angle, proposing that his organisation buy two […]
It looks like I’ll have to throw out my computer. Or at least donate it to some institution I don’t really care for. Maybe if I take it apart and give away the components, the hex on the machine itself will be broken. For the past six months, I have been unable to access the […]
Digby Ricci THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal (Knopf) One hates to bow to conventional wisdom, but Gore Vidal really is a far better essayist than he is a novelist. In his essays, the erudition is elegantly startling, but never obtrusive, and the much-vaunted “mordant wit” is a rapier, not a bludgeon. Thus, Susan Sontag’s […]
Robert Kirby: Loose cannon I have it on the best authority that Monica Lewinsky is actually what is known in the espionage business as a “high-grade deep mole”. In truth Monica works for Saddam Hussein who personally coached her in the finer points of presidential seduction. The entire oval office sexual farrago is a brilliantly […]
Simone de Beauvoir described her companion and fellow philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, as her `greatest achievement’. But it was the American writer Nelson Algren who was the great love of her life. They began a passionate affair just as she was embarking on her landmark feminist text, The Second Sex. In her letters, she tells of […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 8.00pm. SOUTH African shares ended today’s session near their lows as a late burst of selling forced the entire market down. Dealers said JSE shares were pummeled by bad news, including weaker international markets, a declining currency exchange rate and concerns about emerging economies’ debt. The All share index closed […]
An American academic believes the term `world music’ is merely an excuse for music companies to indulge in music cannibalism, writes Anthea Garman In the great age of discovery adventurers like Christopher Columbus sallied forth to explore the planet – with results that have continued to bedevil humanity into this century. Today in a similar […]