The pilot programme to spearhead land reform has fallen flat, with most provinces spending only a fraction of the budgets set aside for this purpose. Jim Day reports THE government programme set up two years ago to spearhead land redistribution has failed to hand over more than a few acres to the landless. Figures from […]
The five bidders for South Africa’s first private TV station have criticised many of the IBA’s proposed regulations for the new licence. Gillian Farquhar reports RAINBOW TELEVISION and Vula Television are the latest entrants in the race for South Africa’s first “free-to-air” private television licence, to be awarded in November by the Independent Broadcasting Authority […]
Draft legislation proposed by the law commission recommends legalising euthanasia, reports Gustav Thiel THE first steps have been taken toward legislation allowing South African doctors to end the lives of the terminally ill. A discussion document by the South African Law Commission, released to the Mail & Guardian, recommends new legislation allowing so-called passive euthanasia […]
Popular British evolutionist Richard Dawkins is in South Africa to promote a love of science. He spoke to Lesley Cowling THERE are few things eminent scientist and Oxford don Richard Dawkins doesn’t know. One of them is that he’s an Aries. Perhaps it would be more correct to say he doesn’t want to know. “Astronomy […]
Andrew Worsdale IN an impassioned oral presentation to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), members of the newly formed Independent Producer’s Organisation discussed the viable options for a new “free-to-air” channel. The organisation responded to the IBA’s discussion paper on the channel, honing in on local content and independent production, programming contributions, language, employment equity and […]
victims Rehana Rossouw ALL victims of gross human rights abuse who give their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be offered the same cash compensation, irrespective of their individual suffering or financial status. The commission’s Reparation and Reconciliation Committee said this week that every victim would be given an equal share of the […]
gore Special writer Ruaridh Nicoll spends 12 hours in the hell halls of Baragwanath Hospital Friday 6.48pm T HE night-porter waits. Lounging in a wheelchair, he watches as the darkness begins to strangle the eve-ning’s flaring sun. At his feet, pools of water from earlier rain stand in the hollows while the tools of his […]
Gustav Thiel THE government is discussing throwing a R200-million lifeline to safeguard specialist services provided by academic hospitals in the Western Cape. The Western Cape Health and Social Services MEC, Ebrahim Rasool, said this week talks with the Finance and Health ministries were under way and an announcement about the cash, to be drawn from […]
Documents found in the wrecked car of Internal Security head Leonard Radu led to the identification of two KwaZulu-Natal warlords as alleged agents, reports Ann Eveleth THE spy scandal which erupted this week also implicates Inkatha Freedom Party warlord David Ntombela. The Mail & Guardian has established that the evidence which led the African National […]
Stuart Hess and Tangeni Amupadhi RULES governing children’s homes are woefully inadequate, the Minister of Welfare and Population Development, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, said this week. She was responding to inquiries by the Mail & Guardian about the spate of disclosures and criminal trials to do with abuses in child-care homes. “The cases of molestation, child rape […]
Potential bidders may think again before taking on SAA’s losses, now set to top R400-million, writes Ferial Haffajee SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS (SAA) may now be up for grabs, but potential bidders are likely to baulk at the extent of its losses – now tipped to top R400-million in 1996-97. The disappointing prognosis comes at a […]
The exposure of alleged ANC spy Sifiso Nkabinde highlights the nature of the tension between George Fivaz and Sydney Mufamadi, write Mail & Guardian Reporters THE public spat between Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi and national Police Commissioner George Fivaz is the culmination of old tensions around police inability to deliver in the face […]
Hazel Friedman ART will soon stop playing the role of Oliver Twist to the public and private sector’s Mr Beadle. This is the prophesy of Dr Chris Mann, convenor of what could well be a landmark international conference on the economic benefits of arts and culture in South Africa. A project of the Grahamstown Foundation […]
Judith Watt THE son of super-surgeon Dr Chris Barnard and a member of the Meerlust wine dynasty are to join Boss Models’s top overseas operation, swelling the ranks of the blue- blooded and beautiful strutting on world catwalks. Chris Barnard, who joined Boss Models’s Cape Town business last year, is to fly to New York […]
Peta Thornycroft THINUS VAN DER MERWE (31), a policeman for 13 years, was killed in a shoot-out under moulting jacaranda trees in Kensington, Johannesburg, just after lunch on Monday. If it had been in the Gauteng school term, he would have died at more or less the same time as suburban buses bump along the […]
Witnesses testified in court this week that a senior children’s home official sexually abused several children in his charge, reports Stuart Hess A FORMER house parent at one of the country’s most respected children’s homes appeared in court this week on charges that he raped and abused five children in his care. James Arthur Frazer […]
Johannesburg’s public defenders turn to gallows humour at the coalface of justice, reports Mungo Soggot THE stench of urine in Court 20 of the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court was so powerful that the court orderly reluctantly opened the large windows to the chilly afternoon air. The smell was seeping up from the cells below, from where […]
`SCIENCE has given to this generation the means of unlimited disaster, or of unlimited progress,” said Winston Churchill. We now know what he means, courtesy of Professor Barry Komisaruk. The professor and his team of researchers at Rutgers University in the United States this week announced the discovery of a chemical in the body which […]
Ann Eveleth STATE-OWNED port operator Portnet has donated taxpayers’ money to Durban’s top cultural centre in a mysterious deal arranged by a former member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Bartel Arts Trust (BAT) says it still has to establish where it is supposed to invest the R50 000 it received in February from Portnet’s Reconstruction and […]
Gustav Thiel THE war between Cape Town’s drug lords and People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) is heading for the ballot box. Notorious gangster Rashied Staggie has announced that he will contest the 1999 elections, while Pagad is said to be forming a political party for the elections. Staggie, the twin brother of Rashaad Staggie […]
Falilat Ogunkoya’s bronze medal at the Olympics inspired her Nigerian teammates to their best performance ever, and now she’s aiming even higher ATHLETICS:Julian Drew WHEN Falilat Ogunkoya, in South Africa at the moment for the Engen Grand Prix series, returned home last year to Lagos with the most successful Nigerian team in Olympic history she […]
With his experience of African conditions and solidity in defence, Gavin `Stability Unit’ Lane looks the right man for the job in South Africa’s vital clash with Congo SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi GAVIN LANE could complete a fairytale rise to international football this weekend when South Africa play Congo in a crucial qualifying match for the […]
* Iran: Total trade has grown more than 25 000% since 1993, and last year stood at R5,7-billion. Main South African exports include cereals, iron, steel and machinery including nuclear equipment. Main imports are oil. Amnesty International says Iranian authorities detain thousands of political prisoners, and often punishes offenders by public flogging, amputations and executions. […]
TV programmes are being rescheduled in an attempt to win back advertisers and viewers, reportGillian Farquhar and Jacquie Golding-Duffy IN an effort to increase advertising revenue and attract viewers, the SABC’s three TV channels are rescheduling prime- time programmes, dropping most magazine productions and introducing “more entertainment-driven” television like game shows and foreign sitcoms. The […]
Rescheduling has led to a struggle to save programmes, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy AN embattled SABC current affairs division is scrambling to salvage some of its programmes in the wake of a shake-up in the department’s schedules. Viewers of SABC3 will only have one current affairs slot a week, scheduled for 9.30pm on Thursdays, while viewers […]
spies Marion Edmunds THE government’s finance watchdog has provided a glimpse of the apparently pampered life of the nation’s spies. National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the South African Secret Services (SASS) agents enjoy plush, furnished accommodation. Employees have also allegedly been leasing their own properties to their agencies, and there are plans for a special […]
Jean-Claude Buhrer in Bern reports on Swiss banks’ efforts to keep a distance from Mobutu and rumours of his hoarded millions AFTER getting its fingers burnt by the Ferdinand Marcos affair and, even more, by the present controversy about what happened to assets deposited in Swiss banks by the victims of Nazism, the Bern government […]
Hazel Friedman AFTER months of expectation, this week saw the launch of the National Arts Council (NAC) – an independent statutory board established to allocate funding for the arts. Even though the NAC Bill has yet to be passed by Cabinet, the official NAC lift-off was announced by the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and […]
Rehana Rossouw THE Mail & Guardian and the Freedom of Expression Institute have instituted legal proceedings against the SANDF in an attempt to open a Cape court martial to the public. Staff Sergeant Herman Phieffer and Corporal Desmond Booysen have been charged with alleging that their commanding officer was racist and with leaking sensitive information […]
Tangeni Amupadhi took a trip to Zion City Moria – along with three million worshippers of Africa’s biggest church THE masses who gathered at Zion City Moria, 40km from Pietersburg, last weekend, did not only pray and listen to the sermon of their leader, Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane. They also bought souvenirs and food, including Zion […]
Marion Edmunds MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES by Thomas Pakenham (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, R195) LEAVING the skirmishes of the Boer War behind him, and the unsightly scramble by colonialists for Africa, award-winning historian Sir Thomas Pakenham has chosen still, silent subjects for his most recent research. Meetings with Remarkable Trees is an unusual and beautiful picture […]
IT has been the best of weeks and the worst of weeks for South African culture. While thugs were meting out their own special breed of cultural elitism at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn, another group of quietly dedicated cultural workers was busy launching the most important arts body yet established in […]