Staff Reporter

Mungo Soggot OLIVER HILL, the South African fugitive fighting extradition from his south London jail cell, has caught the attention of Minister of Justice Dullah Omar who has dispatched his special adviser Enver Daniels to personally oversee attempts to bring him back to South Africa. Omar has also sent a representative from the Transvaal Attorney […]

Suzy Bell A young black child strokes the lilac long nails of “Aurora the Raver”, marvelling at the sight of a flamboyant marionette on exhibition. With purple spiral curls, rainbow coloured eyelashes, bellybutton and nose resplendent with shiny silver rings, it’s no wonder Winnie Mandela (marionette) couldn’t quite compete. In this joint exhibition of KwaZulu-Natal […]

Although the high crime rate was the worst feature of the Olympic evaluation commission’s report, Cape Town still has a good chance of making the final five, writes Julian Drew THERE were no real surprises when the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) evaluation commission released it’s report in Lausanne last Thursday on the 11 candidate cities […]

The Mortgage Indemnity Fund has admitted victimising a Sowetan community, reports Mungo Soggot THE key government player in getting bank loans for the masses has admitted to a group of Soweto residents that it collaborated with three major banks to blacklist a relatively comfortable area in Soweto even though residents meet their bond payments. Residents […]

Stuart Hess THE crackdown on rate defaulters which triggered riots earlier this month in Johannesburg’s coloured suburbs is to restart next week. The decision – announced by the Southern Metropolitan Substructure (SMSS) – coincided with the launch of a commission of inquiry into the riots in Eldorado Park, Westbury and Reiger Park, which left four […]

The M&G’s guest writer this week, Boetie Damane, revisited the `Jozi’ of hope, sorrow and fear he knew as a child BACK in 1966, when I was 12, I was a street child in Hillbrow. We slept by the waterfall on the corner of Catherine Street and Saratoga Avenue. Also in scrapyards. Trees provided a […]

Tim Radford Tough Choices: Facing The Challenge of Food Security (Earthscan, R75) Duke University in the United States has a rice diet house. People who tend to obesity check in and guinea pig-out on rice cooked without salt, and fruit, and lose weight and gain life expectancy. Most people in most countries of the world […]

Gustav Thiel A RESEARCH group established in Cape Town to scientifically research remedies used by traditional healers in malaria and tuberculosis has already had encouraging results. But, in the wake of the recent controversy about the Aids treatment Virodene, researchers are wary about drawing premature conclusions. Tramed, a joint effort of the Medical Research Council […]

Nineties 1991 World Cup quarter-final: October 19, Parc des Princes France 10 England 19 England were on France’s patch. The atmosphere was highly charged. “It was the most ferocious, brutal match I have played in,” wrote England hooker Brian Moore. “It was the reason I play the game. It was the ultimate feeling of being […]

Emma Lindsey savours the sweaty spectacle of an ancient game of strength and skill that is no pastime for bored old fatties IF YOU thought tug-of-war was a pub pastime for a bunch of bored fatties, you’d be wrong. The 10 nations gathered for the fourth world closed indoor championship at the Torbay Leisure Centre […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter IT is the end of the road for acid-burn victim Bernadette Gibson following the Appellate Division’s decision last week to spike her petition to appeal a R131000 damages award. Gibson suffered acid burns to her vagina and lower back at the hands of a negligent gynaecologist. But instead of walking away […]

Jim Day AIDS activists say Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma betrayed them with her ill- considered and premature support for the so-called wonder drug Virodene. Reacting to the report this week by the University of Pretoria and Gauteng Health Department, they say the minister’s failure to fully investigate Virodene before giving it her full public support […]

In cutting university subsidies in the current manner, the ANC is reneging on its election promises, argues University of Natal philosophy professor Daniel Herwitz As an American academic recently arrived from California, I wish to speak out decisively against the funding formula put in place by the Ministry of Education this year. In the name […]

John Arlidge in Edinburgh THE pioneering British scientist who created the first clone of an adult animal – a lamb named Dolly, created from a sheep – admitted this week that the technique could be applied to humans. Dr Ian Wilmut said a human embryo, produced using the same methods, could be used to treat […]

JAZZ ON CD: Gwen Ansell In the beginning was the word. And long before slack, ragga, rap and hip-hop, the word was dub. As Jamaican music emerged from mento, rock-steady and ska in the 1970s, a new kind of artist was born. A whole generation of producers and DJs took advantage of increasingly sophisticated (but […]

Accusations of Transnet’s lack of control over its security services are contained in some explosive reports. Ann Eveleth investigates TRANSPORT parastatal Transnet is sitting on an explosive report into weak controls over private security companies it contracted, estimated to have cost the taxpayer R100- million. The Mail & Guardian has established that the long-running irregularities […]

He was the target of the boo brigade when he played in the under-23 team, now George Koumantarakis is the top scorer in the Premiership SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THERE was more than a touch of irony surrounding the fact that Milpark Stadium was the setting last weekend for one of the finest goals scored by […]

A strange affliction in the hills of KwaZulu-Natal still evades medical science, writes Simon Pooley DRIVE up into the remote Mseleni area in the Ubombo district of northern KwaZulu- Natal and you could be forgiven for thinking you had returned to an African Eden. The rural people live in small kraals, linked to the small […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN tries to get beneath the inscrutable surface of Arts minister Lionel Mtshali Picture a coat-tailed Victorian gentleman posing for one of those daguerreotype photographs and you’ll probably come up with a reasonable facsimile of Lionel Mtshali, Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. Starchily polite, unblinking, with an air of impenetrability effectively masking […]

Peta Thornycroft RADIO station SAfm’s embattled manager Charlene Smith has been told by SABC radio head Govin Reddy to resign on grounds of ill health. Reddy told Smith on February 13 that he would pay her to the end of the month if she resigned “gracefully but immediately”. Smith, hired by SAfm only five months […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports on the far- ranging cuts a top US consultancy has suggested for the SABC THESABC has been advised to axe nearly 1 000 staff and to cut R200-million from the cost of its radio and support services. Two confidential reports by top United States company McKinsey Consultants detail cost-cutting measures ranging from […]

Amid uproar at South Africa’s universities, evidence of state manipulation emerges Ann Eveleth MINUTES of a secret meeting allegedly between Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu, University of Durban-Westville (UDW)council members and high-flying Durban attorney Linda Zama suggest a clear political agenda lies behind an ongoing probe into campus conflict. Attorneys acting for UDW’s Combined Staff Association […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW AT best Eeben Barlow is a pathological charmer. At worst he is a pathological liar. The man who has replaced Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev to become a major power broker in Africa is seeking to legitimise the mercenary business of state- sponsored killing for money. But to hear him talk […]

cuts Jim Day and Tangeni Amupadhi WHEN Wits University Vice-Chancellor Robert Charlton waggled a placard on Jan Smuts Avenue this week, he could count among his allies students who have spent much of this week disrupting campuses across the country. Charlton, a staunch opponent of such misbehaviour, struck the unlikely alliance to protest the belt-tightening […]

The two sides of Zaire’s civil war have agreed tentatively to talk for the first time, reports Chris McGreal ZAIRE’S rebel leader, Laurent Kabila, says direct negotiations with the government could soon be possible following his meeting with President Nelson Mandela this week. But Kabila ruled out an early ceasefire in the five-month civil war […]

Mungo Soggot THE adoption of kidnap victim Timothy Funnell could have breached a key clause of the Child Care Act, laying the grounds for a police investigation. The child’s adoptive parents – Barry and Julia Funnell – who live in Malawi as Baptist missionaries. They registered a Pretoria address when they adopted Timothy in Pretoria […]

Prophets of doom have been predicting Australian dominance in the Test series, but South Africa can boast a combination of experienced campaigners and exciting new talent CRICKET: Jon Swift IT is astounding that the gloom and doom merchants are already predicting an Australian dominance of the Test series which gets under way at the Wanderers […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson IN Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, currently on at the Market Theatre, the main character cries “Use your head! You’re on earth! There’s no cure for that!” No cure for language either, because as relentlessly as Beckett sought to strip life down to its most minimal, sub-atomic essence, he challenged the rigid parameters and […]

Initially banned, the movie Kids finally opens in South Africa this Friday. Our critics offer their views on the film’s bold director and its young star Charl Blignaut SUNDAY night and Sandton Cinema 8 is packed. The tall, thin film-maker stands up front, having been called up to introduce his movie, apparently uneasy in front […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy SEVERAL members of the government’s communications task group, Comtask, have accused the Cabinet of endorsing a “stage- managed operation” to ensure the survival of the old-guard South African Communications Service (Sacs). Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who established Comtask last year to investigate the government’s relationship with the media, last week rejected its recommendation […]

THE government’s decision to ignore a recommendation by its own task team that the South African Communications Service (Sacs) be shut down has wider implications than the waste of taxpayers’ money. The move gives rise for concern about what could be in store for South Africa under a Thabo Mbeki presidency. The case for the […]

The Post Office takes extreme measures to counter AK-47 thieves, reports Marion Edmunds THE Post Office is to establish an internal investigations unit, staffed by former spies, to combat the rampant fraud and theft plaguing its operations. The organisation said this week that the new unit – Security Investigation Services – would work undercover to […]