A high court judgment sends the wrong message to police torturers and their victims, argues `Serjeant at the Bar’ A JUDGE in the Johannesburg High Court has refused to make a special order for costs against the minister of safety and security and two others in connection with an incident of police torture at the […]
A remote-control robot that will pack them in at theme parks could also prove whether life on the moon is viable. Robin McKie reports IN a few weeks, a strange driverless vehicle will be dumped in the Atacama desert in northern Chile and sent trundling over its dunes in a two-month, 200km odyssey. The test […]
Justin Arenstein PROVINCIAL government dithering is hampering plans for a multi-million rand international airport in Mpumalanga. Two rival groups have tabled proposals to build an airport, and both claim the provincial government gave them the green light for their plans nearly 12 months ago. But officials say neither plan has been approved, and that the […]
The IFP has dictated to the new provincial premier whom to appoint to his Cabinet, reports Ann Eveleth INKATHA Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi appears to have blocked attempts by KwaZulu-Natal’s newly elected Premier Ben Ngubane to appoint a provincial Cabinet without his approval. IFP parliamentarians told the Mail & Guardian this week Ngubane -sworn […]
Allister Harry in Hollywood QUEEN LATIFAH is something of a repeat offender. The rapper-turned-actor repeatedly steals scenes from her co-stars Jada Pinkett and Vivica Fox in the new heist movie Set it Off, about four female bank robbers with attitude. Latifah is just one in a long line of rappers now making waves in Hollywood. […]
Huge losses in revenue to pirates have goaded the music industry into constructive action, reports Glynis O’Hara IN China, eight people were executed last year for music piracy. “Just like that,” says Mike Snow, drawing a line across his throat with his finger. The trouble is, they weren’t the big guys. And, according to overseas […]
Chris Dunton THE OPEN SORE OF A CONTINENT: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF THE NIGERIAN CRISIS by Wole Soyinka (Oxford University Press, R161) IT has been a steady, cynical process over the last few years, Soyinka’s harassment by the Nigerian authorities, the confiscation of his passport and the attempt to seize the United Nations documents he […]
BONGANI NDODANA discovers Gilgamesh, a serious musical collaboration that specialises and harmonises in world music SOMEWHERE in the imaginary crossroads between rock, classical music and the music of the East, floats the creative energies of an ambitious, quirky quartet of white twenty-somethings, striving to make sense of what seem to be musical contradictions. Labels are […]
Lyndall Campher THE youth are notoriously fickle when viewing television and the past two weeks of data demonstrate some interesting insights. Firstly, the coloured, Indian and white (CWI) youth and the black youth view different programmes, and secondly the way they view tends to be different. The top ten programmes are: CWI Youth % Fresh […]
MEAT is meat … uh, no, we started with that one the last time a hunk of beef won the Mail & Guardian’s design of the week award. But the nutrition principle remains the same. Except that this time it comes from a billboard poster produced by an anonymous androgyne with a penchant for producing […]
Ann Eveleth THE Shobashobane massacre trial is drawing to a close, with Durban High Court Judge Hilary Squires expected on Monday to begin delivering judgement on one of the worst mass murders in KwaZulu-Natal’s 14-year civil war. For the last two months, more than 50 witnesses have testified about the events of early Christmas Day […]
The Ministry of Labour plans to take tough action if any officials are implicated in the Western Cape training programme scandal, reports Rehana Rossouw A CAPE company training unemployed and unskilled workers may have used fake identity books to defraud the Western Cape Department of Labour of more than R1- million. The department uncovered the […]
child Gustav Thiel `MAN, I want to be a soccer hero one day,” says Richard. “What I’m doing now is not so bad. It won’t last forever.” Richard is 13. He speaks softly, and fiddles with his baseball cap. It’s 1.30 on a Sunday morning, near Cape Town’s Waterfront. As he talks a steady stream […]
Jacquie Golding-Duffy INDEPENDENT producers have still to be convinced that the SABC’s planned internal production cutbacks will prompt the broadcaster to hand them more work. Many producers say more work will have to come to the independent sector, but others argue the SABC’s cutbacks will simply put more producers into an already competitive market. Most […]
Stefaans Brmmer POLICE and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) are looking at “all possible causes” of the car accident in which police assistant commissioner Leonard Radu died last week – including the possibility of foul play. Radu, the most senior former African National Congress cadre integrated into the new South African Police Service (SAPS), headed […]
FINE ART: Suzy Bell IT was love letters that sparked his affair with art. Glorious love letters, whose envelopes were so highly beautified he could only just squeeze in the name and address of his lover. Some of these original envelopes – from bygone days when stamps cost two cents each – are on show […]
South African scientists are discovering that traditional communities are rich in technology, writes Lesley Cowling THERE is a toad in the Northern Province that is considered a delicacy among local people. It is harvested from its natural habitat, has its innards removed and is braaied over coals to provide a gourmet treat for the lucky […]
A R60-million European Union aid package to Zambia has been rejected by the government on grounds of racism, reports Anthony Kunda in Lusaka THE Zambian government has rejected a European Union aid package of R60-million earmarked for its Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (Asip) as it would benefit the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU). Minister of […]
The Asian, a new weekly tabloid, has provoked a mixed response from journalists and academics alike, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy A NEW tabloid will soon hit the streets of Durban and other major cities as it makes what promises to be a grand but controversial entry into the print market. The Asian, a new weekly newspaper […]
Carien du Plessis THE South African Police Service conceded this week that its child protection units (CPUs) only scratch the surface of the problem of child abuse in the country. Police were confronted with nearly 36 000 cases of child abuse last year, more than double the number in1993, and it is widely acknowledged that […]
Gustav Thiel CAPE actors currently employed by the Cape Association Performing Arts Board (Capab) plan the genesis of a major independent drama company, the first of its kind in South Africa, when they are retrenched at the end of this month. The resident artistic director of Capab, Marthinus Basson, responded to an article published ln […]
The shortcomings of South Africa’s top order batsmen that led to two defeats by the Australians have revealed South Africa’s real place in the Test hierarchy CRICKET: Jon Swift OUR singular lack of success in the current Test series against Australia which winds its weary way to conclusion at Centurion Park over the next five […]
Maria McCloy ALAN DARGIN might just as well have been one of the stuffed koalas at the Australia tourist agent expo thing. He was sitting in the corner playing his didgeridoo while poshly dressed agents at Inanda Sun swanned about and ate lunch. Maybe they thought he was there just to create atmospheric Australian sounds. […]
The government is determined to push ahead with an ambitious programme of Budget reform. But change will not take place overnight, write Madeleine Wackernagel and Lynda Loxton THE country’s financing process is undergoing nothing short of a revolution, Director General of Finance Maria Ramos said this week. Briefing the parliamentary finance committee, Ramos agreed that […]
Young girls selling sex in hotels, young boys selling sex on the street – child abuse is rife in South Africa Stuart Hess PLAYING in the street with her friends, she looks like any ordinary four-year-old girl. Wearing a dirty pink polkadot dress, Thembi (not her real name) plays happily, but her smile disappears when […]
SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi AS the national youth team prepares to make its African championship debut on Monday in Morocco a debate almost as old as the game itself has been reopened. When it comes to a clash of fixtures, should a footballer play for his club or his country? Several Premier Soccer League clubs had […]
The truth commission exhumes bodies from security police death farms, one in an IFP- held area, reports Ann Eveleth ONE of the death farms uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last week sits in the heart of an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold in the volatile KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Truth commission investigators last week exhumed the […]
The competitors may have mixed motives, but the sport’s organisers have Olympic hopes, writes Jonathan Watts WOMEN’S sumo may have been established in Japan last year with the aim of making it an Olympic event, but even the competitors are finding it difficult to take the sport entirely seriously. “I suppose it is still a […]
Our man in Havana finds the heirs of Teofilo Stevenson keeping up a noble tradition BOXING:John Duncan THERE is no laser show or dry ice at Cuba’s national boxing championships in the Ateneo Fernando del Dios Bunuel, an ugly concrete arena in the eastern sugar-and-beer province of Holguin. And the only people who are getting […]
Iden Wetherell AIR Zimbabwe, at the centre of a row last year over President Robert Mugabe’s habit of commandeering planes, flew into another storm this week as pilots intensified a strike for better pay which grounded the entire fleet. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the airline. Internal management documents reveal the […]
JOYCE OZYNSKI grieves over the lost architectural opportunities in Johannesburg’s Central Business District THERE is some medicine for Johannesburg’s ugly, neglected Central Business District (CBD) that no one has yet prescribed. It is this: city council architects and town planners should be obliged to live and work in the centre of the CBD vortex before […]
tetchy THE members of the court represent some of South Africa’s finest legal minds, and as such can be intimidating individuals. They have been openly hostile to criticism, even that expressed in academic journals, and highly critical of press coverage. Here are opinions of some of their performance, expressed by clerks, academics and lawyers: Constitutional […]