Staff Reporter

Today’s scientist can no longer afford to be an egghead. Simon Kent reports from London IN the movies, scientists are usually portrayed as humourless boffins: all brains and no personality. Take Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, whose ability to defeat an alien ship, armed only with a laptop, was the result not only of years […]

Ann Eveleth A SNAP Mail & Guardian survey of 40 Durban households this week turned up a 10% household error in last month’s national census, and revealed wide schisms between black and white views on the project. White Durban residents polled were only half as likely as blacks to say they understood the reason for […]

Two great names in African soccer – who have clashed with some great names in South African soccer – will meet in the final of the African Champions Cup SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi SHOOTING STARS of Nigeria and Zamalek of Egypt, the clubs who will contest the biggest club event on the African soccer calendar, need […]

A London office, standing empty for two years, is hardly a luxury the SABC can afford, writes Marion Edmunds THE South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is paying 216 000 annually – more than R1,7-million at the current exchange rate – for its broadcasting office in London, half of which has been standing empty for about […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE impression created of South Africa in foreign countries is not as flattering as it should be because missions based abroad are being “seriously hampered” in their attempts to promote the country, said a Task Group on Government Communications (Comtask) report handed this week to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. South Africa needs to […]

ANDREWWORSDALE discusses the season’s children’s films, and some of his own all- time favourites PROBABLY the greatest kid’s movie of all time is The Wizard of Oz because it appeals to adults and their progeny, maybe because the wicked witch is a bit terrifying for toddlers. My favourite kids’ movies of the past year, Babe […]

South African companies are tightening security measures as the incidence of white- collar crime increases, reports Madeleine Wackernagel SOUTH AFRICAN businesses have the highest expectation of fraud in the world, according to a new survey by the international consultancy, KPMG. In the second survey of its kind to be conducted in this country, KPMG found […]

Rehana Rossouw A MAJOR breakthrough was made by the truth commission at its Cape Town hearing this week when policemen began confessing their involvement in the killing of the “Guguletu Seven”. Superintendent William Liebenberg, former head of Cape Town’s terrorism detection unit, admitted Vlakplaas operatives had been central in a security police operation in 1986 […]

1976 Cabinet minutes quote Jimmy Kruger urging his colleagues to back shootings. Mungo Soggot and Stuart Hess report CABINET notebooks from 1976 reveal murder was official National Party policy, with the recommendation from the then minister of justice, police and prisons, Jimmy Kruger, that the police kill more people in the wake of the Soweto […]

The refugees may be going, but the suffering continues. Chris McGreal reports from Mugunga IT might be that in the distant future someone will stumble upon Mugunga and wonder if they aren’t standing in the midst of some lost civilisation. Only a maze of walls laboriously cleaved from the harsh carpet of volcanic rock will […]

recommendation Battling reduced budgets, several universities are now also embroiled in rows over staff selection and payments Andy Duffy THE University of Venda has quashed a report by independent consultants which recommends hefty salary increases for staff. The university’s council, which commissioned the report from respected Pretoria human resources consultant FSA-Contact, refused last week to […]

SCIENCE WATCH: Lesley Cowling IF you haven’t mastered the technology of your video machine yet, now is the time to learn how to set record. December features a slew of science and technology documentaries on SABC3, as the channel needs to screen material it acquired as NNTV before the licences to broadcast them run out. […]

ROGER TREDRE discusses an explosive new biography of Yves Saint Laurent YVES SAINT LAURENT, acknowledged as the greatest fashion designer of the century, was almost destroyed by the pressures of his job, according to a biography just published. Design writer and journalist Alice Rawsthorn outlines Saint Laurent’s life as a round of drug and alcohol […]

Andy Duffy TRANSNET sacked an official after accepting unchallenged disciplinary charges brought against him by chair Louise Tager and denying him legal representation. The hearing refused to let Terrance Naidoo’s lawyers speak, and denied him time for a supreme court review of its decision. Naidoo, the government’s representative on Transnet’s transformation programme, was dismissed last […]

Madeleine Wackernagel GROSS domestic product (GDP) figures for the third quarter were in line with expectations at an annualised rate of 3,2% growth. This relative decline, after the unexpectedly strong growth in the second quarter of 3,5%, was only to be expected, says Bernie de Jager, head of the Reserve Bank’s economics unit. “Growth in […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm THE IDEA that the left’s fight against Franco in Spain was defeated, not by fascist powers but by Stalin’s betrayal of true socialism, is not one held by all those who took part in what was as much a civil war as a left-right struggle. But it is one espoused by George […]

Chris McGreal in Rubava DJUMA LIBURAKARYO is proud of his eight doors. It is the first thing he points out about his mud-and-stone house halfway up a hill in a banana grove. But he cannot pass through them. Strangers slam the front door in his face and so Liburakaryo is confined to an old scout […]

Shirley Kossick YOUNG WIVES’ TALES by Susan Sussman (Headline Review, R59,99) MOLLY, one of the young wives of the title, is passionately involved with storytelling and is struggling to finish a dissertation on the subject. But the prologue – a marvellously evocative passage on the premonition experienced by Molly’s aunt – gives warning that danger […]

Portnet officials, ignoring orders from parent company Transnet, went on a lavish golfing weekend in June. Andy Duffy reports ONE of the final orders given by outgoing Portnet chief executive Neil Oosthuizen was that the company should ignore the budget imposed by parent Transnet on its 1996 golf charity day. The organisation instead paid R664 […]

Colin Blane in London WHEN Ethiopia’s long civil war reached a climax in 1991, cameraman Mohamed “Mo” Amin, who died at the age of 52 in the hijacked Ethiopian airliner crash off the Comoros Islands last weekend, was filming the rebel takeover of Addis Ababa and the shelling of the imperial palace. Mo had dramatic […]

A witness’s life was endangered when Attorney General Tim McNally released her from the state protection programme, writes Ann Eveleth THE family of a South Coast witness to violence this week accused KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally of endangering her life. The witness – a former Inkatha Freedom Party member who turned state’s evidence early […]

A new government approach to NGOs is needed, argues Ben Turok on the eve of NGO Week AS the non-governmental organisation (NGO) movement prepares for the celebration of NGO Week nationwide, we have to admit that the new South Africa owes the movement an apology. It has to be acknowledged that the consolidation of democratic […]

South Africa’s labour market is labelled `inflexible’. The facts refute this, says the ILO’s Guy Standing IN the1990s, most governments are almost prisoners of international opinion, even in medium-sized countries such as South Africa. Economic policy is determined not only by realities, but by impressions that filter through a small community of commentators. Those in […]

Amy Lawrence WHEN World Footballer of the Year George Weah considered boycotting an exhibition match in America, it was no prima donna tantrum. Weah’s motives to pull out of a game were based on global emotions. When he presses his talented feet on to a football pitch, he is as much ambassador for Liberia as […]

Stephen Gray NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER by Langston Hughes (Scribners, R44,95) WITH his Collected Poems in two volumes recently published in the United States, the work of Langston Hughes (1902-67) is set for a revival. The exhaustive biography of him by Arnold Rampersad is in paperback as well, spurring reprints of Hughes’s work, most of which […]

THEATRE:Suzy Bell HE whacks unsuspecting kiddies on the head with a plastic baseball bat, offers them half-eaten rotten apples as if they were champagne truffles, and munches on sticky green spaghetti worms found in old tins of dog food. “Yech!” Screech the kids, but of course they love it. They love anything gross, obscene and […]

IVY MATSEPE-CASABURRI might want to ask herself whether she wants to be made premier of the Free State in the current circumstances – when she is getting the job because of the dismissal of a highly respected politician who won the post through the normal democratic procedures. But, if she still does want the job, […]

This week’s British Budget is one of the most cautious in electioneering history as the Tories bank on strong economic growth to keep them in power, writes Alex Brummer THE central assertion of Kenneth Clarke’s Budget strategy – that his tight fiscal stand removes the need for higher interest rates – does not stand up […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki’s Task Group on Government Communications (Comtask) this week tabled a hard-hitting report challenging government to revamp its internal communications departments, making them more flexible and less bureaucratic. It also recommends that the government funds the SABC and Channel Africa, the external service which carries news from across Africa in […]

Confidential papers point to a top-level plot to oust Transnet executive Sipho Nyawo, reports Andy Duffy SACKED Transnet executive Sipho Nyawo was the victim of a “witch-hunt” by white management fearful of government plans to transform the parastatal, acting Portnet chief executive Ivor Funnell says. In his submission to an inquiry which ended this month […]

Duncan Mackay AT least four positive drug tests taken at the Olympic Games in Atlanta are yet to be made public, according to an expert on testing. Only two positive tests were reported from athletics events at this summer’s Games, which were hailed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)president Juan Antonio Samaranch as among the […]

>From secretive parastatal to private-sector partner, the metamorphosis of the CSIR has been significant. New challenges of funding and resources lie ahead, writes Madeleine Wackernagel CONSIDER that the world’s top 30 companies together spend more on research and development than South Africa as a whole and you get an idea of the challenges facing the […]