Staff Reporter

David Philip Publishers are celebrating their 25th anniversary, writes RACHELLE GREEFF IF Paarl Mountain has a Taal Monument, the Werdmuller Centre next to Claremont station should consider a monument to David Philip Publishers – it can only beautify the amazingly unsightly building. DPP survived the old South Africa with its draconian censorship laws, book raids […]

Angella Johnson POLICE dented the operation of a truck hijacking syndicate this week when they raided a warehouse in one of Johannesburg’s industrial sectors and confiscated R200 000 worth of goods which had been stolen from a lorry hijacked in Gauteng. In one of their quickest hits this year, officers from the anti-hijacking unit, acting […]

SOCCER:Andrew Muchineripi HAVING already won the African Champions Cup and Super Cup within a few months, defending African champions Orlando Pirates will now focus their sights on the African Cup Winners Cup, which is known as the Nelson Mandela Cup. But first, they will have to sweep aside the challenge of Jomo Cosmos when the […]

BAFANA KHUMALO talks to two young DJs who are making waves on community radio HIS name first cropped up at one of those PR junkets where rich companies spend an enormous amount of money to win over newspaper hacks with an appetite for expensive food. He is Zakile Dakile – shortened to Zak because, he […]

Stephen Gray SOL PLAATJE: SELECTED WRITINGS edited by Brian Willan (WUP, R120) THE British scholar Brian Willan’s selection of the journalism of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was first announced all of 20 years ago, when the centenary of his subject’s birth was being celebrated as visibly as possible by the few literary fundis then in the […]

Andrew Worsdale The First International Southern African Film Market has drawn to a close in Cape Town. Our reporters were there THE scale and organisational success of last week’s Film and TV Market in Cape Town was amazing – especially considering the organisers didn’t know if all their finance was in place until four weeks […]

The Financial Mail editorship is up for grabs, but no formal offers have yet been made, reports Mungo Soggot BUSINESS REPORT editor Peter Bruce has emerged as a contender for the editorship of the Financial Mail (FM), which lost Nigel Bruce in the the dramatic takeover of Finance Week by former FM editor at large, […]

THEATRE: Glynis O’Hara THE first 15 minutes or so of Two Straight Queers seemed to confirm my worst fears, with in-jokes that couldn’t leap the ghetto’s perimeter fence. But all of a sudden it took off and I found myself laughing – really hard. A gay man, Bernie, is left R2-million by his uncle, on […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman CARL GIETL’S exhibition 1996 is and is not what it seems. The paradoxical seductiveness of his work is that while it has been conceptualised with such obvious – almost simplistic – clarity of purpose, in the eyes of the beholder it takes on a metaphoric life (or in this case, death) […]

Joshua Amupadhi traces how the virus was identified by a Johannesburg doctor before it could spread too far `Angel,” the Gabonese doctor who unwittingly brought the Ebola virus to South Africa, flew home on Wednesday. Back in Libreville he is popularly known as the “Angel” because of the lives he saves so regularly at the […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj kicked off a two-day conference with lawyers and interest groups on the future of state accident insurance designed to fuel debate on the issue by laying down the law and singling out lawyers who had attacked his proposals. In a manner described by attending lawyers as “pretty […]

poachers Eddie Koch IT was the week in which conservationists launched a series of missions to save not the white rhino or an endangered species of whale but thousands of poisonous scorpions, hairy baboon spiders and swimming crabs that were plundered from Mozambique in an effort to smuggle them out of the country through South […]

Marion Edmunds THEY are called the “Gestapo”. These are not the security police but the men from the Medicines Control Council (MCC) inspectorate who stand accused of raiding and harassing homeopaths and dispensers of natural medicines. And while some homeopaths have sunk into silence for fear of having their businesses closed down, others have started […]

THE United States’s case against Boutros Boutros-Ghali has never been entirely clear. He is said not to have been sufficiently vigorous during his secretary generalship in reforming the United Nations. He is said to have been ineffective in marshalling the world to deal with the succession of particularly searing tragedies that arose during his time […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm `THE story that follows is about Minnesota. It evokes the abstract landscape of our childhood – a bleak, windswept tundra, resembling Siberia except for its Ford dealerships and Hardee’s restaurants. It aims to be both homey and exotic, and pretends to be true.” So says Ethan Coen, producer and co-writer of Fargo, […]

A short cut for the rough may have made the course easier, but this won’t detract from the victory of whoever ends up first in a quality-packed Million Dollar field GOLF: Jon Swift THERE has always been something very special about the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge. There is the attraction of watching a select field […]

Marion Edmunds The Steyn Commission on remuneration of representatives has recommended an 8% real increase on the total package for MPs and members of the Senate, bringing their total annual package to R239 642 from R221 861. Members of the provincial legislatures will have their packages increased by 2% and President Nelson Mandela will have […]

Mark Milner in Sao Paulo PEDRO MALAN does not look like a gambler. Pipe-smoking and bespectacled, he projects the image of the career civil servant he has been for much of his working life. Malan, however, is now Brazil’s minister of finance; a key player in President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s attempt to wean the country […]

KEN OWEN accused Cathy O’ Dowd of publishing “unverified rubbish” about the Everest expedition, and concluded “I do hope this is not the journalism taught at Rhodes” (“`Mortal peril’ on Everest,” November 15 to 21). It’s poor journalism to make this comment without giving readers the background that Cathy has been a master’s student and […]

Gwen Ansell TANANAS WIDE ENSEMBLE: Unamunacua (Gallo/GMP) FOR this, their fifth album, Tananas’s core of guitarist Steve Newman and drummer Ian Herman expands to include more than a dozen jazz and folk colleagues. The difference is dramatic. The spacey, wistful guitar tunes are still there (with reprises of a few old favourites) but the limited […]

A survey has found that diplomats at 51 out of 71 missions are overpaid – so they’re taking heavy salary cuts, writes Mungo Soggot THE Department of Foreign Affairs has slashed the salaries of South African diplomats – some by as much as 50% – after exploring what it really costs them to live abroad. […]

Media editor Jacquie Golding-Duffy takes exception to being excluded from this week’s tte–tte THE meeting this week between President Nelson Mandela and 22 black journalists, among them prominent and respected black editors, has been labelled “fruitful” by presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana. It was, he says, a “no-holds-barred” discussion and “at the end of the day […]

For Rwandan Tutsis, the return of Hutu refugees from Zaire is terrifying, reports Dele Olojede in Gisenyi, Rwanda AS he watched thousands of Hutu refugees pour across the border from Zaire, on their way back from self-exile, Jean-Marie Musaidizi seethed with quiet anger. Musaidizi, a survivor of the 1994 genocide, was angry that the people […]

To win the Test series in India South Africa don’t just need `good’ cricketers, they need match winners – and Paul Adams fits that description CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar A FANTASTIC gamble – or a simple case of common sense. Paul Adams, on one hand, was asked to join the South African squad in India on […]

Gwen Ansell CLUB-OWNERS and artists aren’t always bosom buddies. And when jazz clubs close, the musicians are often ambivalent mourners, finding it hard to regret the passing of managements that paid them poorly or not at all. But this week it’s the musicians who’ve come together to try to save Melville’s Bass Line, which, with […]

Speculation is growing about a government review of the Independent Development Trust’s status, reports Joshua Amupadhi SOUTH AFRICA’S biggest and richest non- governmental organisation (NGO) has called off a mega relaunch at which President Nelson Mandela was to officiate, adding to speculation that the government is to review its status. The Independent Development Trust (IDT) […]

An increase in poorer students and a decrease in government funding has left universities battling to resolve a cash crisis, writes Andy Duffy THOUSANDS of students could be refused entry to universities next year amid an escalating funding crisis which is forcing institutions to axe staff and courses. Wits, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Fort Hare […]

The French Barbarian team is packed with talent, but the Springbok `dirt-trackers’ team has been playing well enough to show that they can meet the challenge RUGBY:Andy Capostagno T HE trouble with touring is that just when you’ve gotten to like a place, you have to move on. Those of us lucky enough to spend […]

A few years in New York changed Tananas’s drummer Ian Herman. GWEN ANSELL finds out how much THE club is crowded. So crowded, in fact, that the punters can’t get to the toilets and the musicians can’t get to the stage. The bar staff are sprouting extra arms, and the waiters have started a human […]

Desmond Morris, at 68, is still pursuing his provocative studies of the naked ape. He spoke to Andrew Billen in Oxford DR DESMOND MORRIS has made a career out of watching people. He has the eye of a zoologist trained in the tradition of Julian Huxley and Darwin, but he also possesses highly developed showbiz […]

JACQUIE GOLDING-DUFFY has her doubts about a new children’s TV show EITHER you love them or hate them, but Felicia Mabuza-Suttle and Dali Tambo are not going away. Why not? Not because their shows are roaring successes but because they have managed, perhaps unconsciously, to produce the next generation of clones. Jika Jika, the innovative […]

It took a two-year investigation to uncover members of the `Muslim mafia’, reports Angella Johnson THEY called themselves the “Muslim mafia” and bragged openly that they were untouchable because of the number of police officers on their payroll. Then an honest cop found a way to break one of the biggest criminal syndicates operating in […]