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 […]
David Hirst The Sudanese opposition, a broad coalition of African southerners and Arab Muslim northerners known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), held a conference in Cairo this month to plan the next stage of its struggle against the Khartoum government. It is the first time Egypt has hosted such a gathering, and it is […]
Sandra Spavins EMILY-KATE by Meg Jordan (Iris) This is a story about a little girl who temporarily goes missing on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal. It is a large-format picture book, but has more text than most books of this type. The average eight or nine year old should be able to read it, yet the […]
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 […]
Karen Jackman A new computer game designed to make Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution fun for biology students has earned an international award for its South African inventor. For the average 18-year-old, stepping into a new life as a university student does not involve donning a biohazard suit, digging up the missing link or tracking […]
Karlin Lillington For most earthlings, just finding a hotel with Internet access is a challenge. Nasa, however, thinks big. The space agency intends to have Mars “Internet-enabled” in the next three to four years. Last week at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Dr Vinton Cerf, a senior vice-president at telecom company MCI, joined […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00PM SUDANESE head of state Omar el-Beshir on Friday lashed out at US President Bill Clinton for ordering a military strike on Khartoum, and said his country will take the matter to the United Nations. The US overnight launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles at “terrorist” targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. The […]
Andrew Muchineripi English Premiership The English Premiership grows more cosmopolitan by the day with league and cup holders Arsenal among the clubs who bolstered their “foreign legion” during the close season. Defender Nelson Vivas was in the Argentine team that ended the World Cup dreams of England and arrived at Highbury from Swiss club Lugano […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week The Coen brothers – Joel and Ethan – made their first movie efforts on 8mm while they were kids, doing remakes of famous Hollywood movies they had seen. Eventually they did a pilot for a noir comedy-thriller, Blood Simple, and managed to gather enough money to film 30 minutes […]
With the controversy surrounding Mark Hipper’s portraits of naked children still simmering, Fiona MacCarthy reports on an exhibition of Lewis Carroll’s photographs of little girls Xie Kitchin, little girl photographed as a pert Chinaman, perched in skimpy silk kimono on a pyramid of tea boxes. Alice Liddell dressed up as a small beggarmaid, rags falling […]
Brenda Atkinson On exhibition in Johannesburg An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Lionel Abrams opened at the Standard Bank Gallery last week to warm tribute from local cultural luminaries. One of these, an article by Albie Sachs in the Sunday Independent, provided a poignant and poetic insight into the man who was Sachs’s friend […]
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 […]
Mail & Guardian correspondents A last-ditch attempt by a coalition of states to rescue the ailing regime of Congolese President Laurent Kabila may have come too late as anti-government rebels continued their inexorable march to the capital Kinshasa this week. Despite reports of a ceasefire offer from the rebels and desperate attempts by South Africa […]
Steve Smith Live in Cape Town I once read this astute statement somewhere (Q magazine, I think): “A significant measure of a band’s ability is how they approach cover songs.” Witnessing a gig shared by Cape Town bands Fever Pussy and Blunt, the accuracy of that yardstick was once again confirmed. One band got it […]
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 […]
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 […]
Howard Barrell Over a Barrel Thabo Mbeki, eloquent wielder of words though he is, has given himself a nigh impossible task: talking up an African revival. How the hell can the deputy president talk of an “African renaissance” when this continent is maimed by murder and misery? Look at Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENTS AND DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. THE last suspect detained for questioning in connection with the bombing of the Palnet Hollywood restaurant at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront has been released. TWO women detained on Thursday at Cape Town International Airport, on suspicion of involvement in Tuesday night’s bombing of the waterfront […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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: […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Friday 11.00am. SOUTH African athletes have added three more gold medals to their haul at the African Athletics Championships in Dakar, Senegal, bringing their bag of gold medals to seven. Pole-valter Okkert Brits won the evnt with a vault of 5,40m, while Burger Lamprechts took the shot-put gold with a throw […]
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 […]
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 […]
Suzy Bell attends the annual celebrations of the appearance or birth of Lord Krishna, the supreme deity who revealed the Bhagavad Gita Steeped in sacred ceremony and ritual, over 50 000 Hare Krishna devotees, some from as far afield as Poland and Australia, immersed themselves in the three-day festival of Sri Krishna Janmastami last weekend. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 1.20pm. THE Moerane commission into alleged irregularities in the department of former Gauteng safety and security MEC Jessie Duarte said on Thursday that there is a strong suspicion that Duarte was implicated in a cover-up of the accident she was involved in while driving her official vehicle. “However, a suspicion, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 1.30pm. THE Eastern Province rugby team caused probably the greatest upset of the 1998 Currie Cup championships by beating the Free State Cheetahs 20-7 in Port Elizabeth on Friday. The Elephants were ahead 14-7 at half-time, and defended with absolute commitment to keep the Cheetahs, last year’s runners-up in the […]
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 […]