Staff Reporter

A UN report has revealed mismanagement and breaking of rules by officials at the Rwanda genocide tribunal , writes Chris McGreal A UNITED NATIONS report says the international Rwanda genocide trials have been crippled by chaotic management, underqualified legal staff and indifference at UN headquarters. The UN inspector general, Karl Paschke, said that unless there […]

Iden Wetherell ZIMBABWE’s human rights record has taken a hammering with a United States official report detailing violations ranging from police brutality to interference in the media. The US State Department’s 1996 Country Report on Zimbabwe criticises the Harare government for failing to pursue past allegations of torture and refusing to prosecute police and intelligence […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson WHILE some of Athol Fugard’s later works, like A Place With the Pigs, are mark ed by claustrophobic symbolism and metaphor, his earlier plays like Hello and Goodbye and People Are Living There are finely textured examples of dirty real ism, where action and character are not slaves to ethereal philosophies or […]

As Western consumers move toward natural foods, organic farming in South Africa is confined to small-scale believers and subsistence farmers Julia Grey THE Michael Mount Organic Market in Bryanston, Gauteng, features immaculate wooden stalls stocked with nature’s elixirs and healing stones, the soothing sounds of an acoustic guitar wafting over piles of purple aubergines and […]

The first stop for Investment South Africa=20 is South-East Asia and interest is strong,=20 Rafiq Bagus tells Madeleine Wackernagel RAFIQ BAGUS’S new job is persuading=20 foreigners to invest in South Africa. No=20 easy task given the fear of crime, but in=20 his previous incarnation at Wesgro, he was=20 instrumental in bringing Levi Strauss to=20 the […]

As the recent riots have shown, cross- subsidisation between black and white areas=20 has failed as a policy. Aspasia Karras=20 reports THE senseless death of young residents in=20 Eldorado Park was not part of the=20 transformation agenda of local government.=20 What the chaos reflected was the latent=20 social upheaval precipitated by the=20 democratisation of institutional […]

Fifteen years ago Roger Price witnessed an event he will never forget. Today he is seeking answers to what he saw. Eddie Koch reports ROGER PRICE arrived in our office last week loaded with guilt, and a grey plastic bag under his arm filled with the paraphernalia he uses in a quest for the truth […]

Marion Edmunds PENSION fraud is costing South Africa at least R1-billion a year, and only direct government control of the welfare system can stop it, a government task team says. The task team – the Committee For Restructuring of Social Security, led by Reverend Frank Chikane – says the current province-based system of handing out […]

Intelligence agent Arthur Kemp appears to have knowledge of a wider plot behind Chris Hani’s assassination, writes Stefaans Brmmer ARTHUR KEMP, the right-wing journalist who gave address details for a “hit list” to Chris Hani’s killers, had links with the old National Intelligence Service (NIS) – raising new questions about possible complicity or foreknowledge in […]

The medicines control bureaucracy is being accused of denying people with Aids a chance to save their lives. Jim Day reports THERE are people with Aids in South Africa who want to take Virodene now – and they want no part of what they see as bureaucratic meddling by the Medicines Control Council. Patients interviewed […]

The Shobashobane massacre has come to trial, but the list of suspects is decreasing and people question whether justice will be done. Ann Eveleth reports DUMAZILE NYAWOSE watched helplessly as armed men stabbed her 17-year-old daughter Phindile to death. They propped her limp body in a sitting position in a waterhole and moved on. Amos […]

Krisjan Lemmer Wear shades, the future’s so bright A South African man with a dream of a=20 bright future is about as scarce as a=20 politician driving a VW nowadays. Or so we=20 thought, until someone showed us a speech=20 made by the rector and vice-chancellor of=20 the University of Zululand, Professor CRM=20 Dlamini. What […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW PULEEZE, do not call Basil Douglas a “so- called coloured”. It pisses him off. Like the k-word does black folk. He is Coloured, with a capital C, and proud of it. Heck, he is even prepared to fight for the right to be called coloured. The man who organised last week’s […]

Anthony Egan STEVE BIKO: I WRITE WHAT I LIKE – A SELECTION OF HIS WRITINGS edited by Aelred Stubbs (Ravan, R49,99) HAD he not been murdered by security police in 1977, Steve Biko would be 50 no w. Where he would have stood in today’s political environment is anybody’s gue ss, but in the end […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE government conceded this week that the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) mandate for the SABC, central to plans to transform the broadcaster, is too expensive. The Telecommunications Ministry and the SABC said funding constraints and suggestions that the broadcaster become commercially self-sufficient had rendered many of the IBA’s recommendations impractical. The government has […]

John Vidal and Walter Schwarz THE Munich company Hofpfisterei Stocker is baker to the former Bavarian kings. It employs 900 people, has 700 outlets and uses 15 000 tonnes of cereal a year. Two years ago, it sniffed the winds of change, did its sums and converted its whole operation to organically grown. Competitors were […]

TECHNO: Greg Bowes IN the era of massive warehouse raves and superclubs, DJs have become more tha n just folk who mix records – some have become as big as pop stars. When Boy G eorge DJ’d in Johannesburg last year a 14 000 strong crowd turned up to see hi m, surely as many […]

Charl Blignaut IT was probably a song like Jong Dames Dinamiek (referring to a young women’s cultural group established under National Party rule) that did it. So upset we re the censors in 1990 that they banned the album Die Saai Lewe (The Tedious L ife) by Randy Rambo en die Rough Riders – the […]

Caitlin Davies SWEET-TOOTHED elephants are going to have a field day if a sugar plantation gets under way in northern Botswana, in what conservationists call one of the most environmentally unfriendly schemes imaginable. The sugar plantation is reportedly to be built on the sand bridge behind the Chobe River and inside the Kasane Forest Reserve […]

Angella Johnson VIOLENCE in the taxi industry is being fuelled by sinister “third force” operatives who encourage the use of hitmen to kill rivals, according to a programme to be aired on the SABC next Thursday (February 20). Violence For Hire, a 30-minute documentary looking at the bloodier side of the taxi business, shows that […]

Shyam Bhatia in Cairo EGYPT’S only two hard rock bands have abandoned rehearsals, hidden their poste rs and locked up their CDs after a police crackdown on heavy-metal fans brande d as Satanists. A satanic fever sweeping the country has prompted some Islamic leaders to warn that “deviants” deserve the death penalty, and Egypt’s opposi […]

Richard Thomas in Washington IT looks as if the game is finally up for=20 the tobacco industry. The anti-smoking=20 lobby is anticipating a spell of success=20 after decades of disappointment in the=20 courtrooms. For 1997 is the year when=20 government bodies finally square up to a=20 corporate lobby whose wealth and power=20 seemed to guarantee […]

Top ANC women helped establish the country’s first private deportation camp, reports HEIN MARAIS SEVERAL prominent women members of the African National Congress are linked to a private company running South Africa’s first private deportation camp. The Lindela Accommodation Centre, in Randfontein on the far West Rand, is a central holding point for captured illegal […]

As SAA limbers up for an equity partner there are increasing signs that morale and standards are slipping. Mungo Soggot and Max Gebhardt report ZUKILE Nomvete grudgingly tells the story of how he was saved by rival Sun Air shortly after he assumed his Transnet post of executive director in charge of South African Airlines […]

Debate rages about the role the media should take in reporting the truth commission, writes Claudia Braude * the run-up to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission conducting hearings on the role played by the media during the apartheid years, the debate surrounding the press playing a reconciliatory role raged among journalists at a workshop held […]

Shine has been called the ‘best film you’ll see in 1997’ but its dramatisat= ion of the truth has been questioned.=20 Mike Hutchinson ADELAIDE, Western Australia, May, 1986: Kerry Hicks had a memorable birthda= y t hat year. She and her husband Scott were expecting friends for dinner, to c= ele brate. The scene was […]

Gillian Farquhar and Jacquie Golding-Duffy report on whether advertising agents are adapting their creative work in an effort to keep up to date with changes locally THE “new” South Africa born two-and-a-half years ago has brought with it a different set of social and cultural dynamics into the advertising arena. An industry which was predominantly […]

Mungo Soggot and Stuart Hess THE records of Cabinet meetings at which some of the most traumatic events of the period before the 1994 elections were discussed appear to have been gutted and sanitised. The records, released to the Mail & Guardian by the National Archives in Pretoria this week, are written in the style […]

Shirley Kossick THE GIANT’S HOUSE by Elizabeth McCracken (Jonathan Cape, R69,95) FALL ON YOUR KNEES by Ann-Marie MacDonald=20 (Jonathan Cape, R84,95) A RATIONAL MAN by Teresa Benison=20 (Vintage, R62) ELIZABETH McCRACKEN was chosen as one of Granta magazine’s 20 best young Am= eri can writers on the strength of her short story collection, Here’s Your […]

Anthony Egan COLONIAL SOUTH AFRICA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE RACIAL ORDER by Timothy Keegan= =20 (David Philip, R79,95) WAS modern apartheid South Africa the product of the “mineral revolution” o= f g old and diamonds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Or do the roots= go back even further into the Dutch […]

SOCCER:Andrew Muchineripi AS the South African Football Association (Safa) seeks solutions to its man= y p roblems, they could do much worse than phone 643-3341 and ask for Mr Trevor= Ph illips. The chief executive officer of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) may not have= al l the answers to all the questions, but the […]

New York has legalised ‘extreme fighting’, an anything-goes mix of martial = art s. Ian Katz reports=20 ON March 26, Kenny Monday and John Lewis will step into a ring in an as yet= un disclosed Manhattan arena and do their level best to beat the living daylig= hts out of one another. They will […]