Staff Reporter

The presdent’s handling of the leadership issue is an indication that the ANC is asserting the importance of the organisation over the individual.Stefaans Brmmer and Marion Edmunds report PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s weekend statement to his party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) was less a reflection on Thabo Mbeki’s chances to be his political heir than a […]

Anthony Kunda and Stefaans Brmmer APPARENTLY faked documents saying that Zambian President Frederick Chiluba’s wife visited South Africa for drugs treatment adds to a litany of irregularities as the Zambian election race enters its final stage. The Mail & Guardian was provided this week with immigration computer printouts, and what appears to be first lady […]

An indaba held by the parks board to discuss the problem of elephants in the Kruger Park ended up being dominated by the needs of neighbouring communities, writes Eddie Koch THE sky on the night of President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration back in May 1994 was moonless and, after watching the song and dance at the […]

Palaeontologists have found an 18-million- year-old tooth in Namaqualand, writes Lesley Cowling. Is this proof that Eden extended as far as South Africa? FEW people taking a stroll along a beach would notice this small, white, pebble-like object. A dentist should recognise it as a tooth, says French palaeontologist Dr Brigitte Senut. “And if he […]

Newcomer Facts & Fiction is taking on the industry giant with a formal application to the Competition Board over claims of unfair practices, writes Max Gebhardt THE on-going row between book giant CNA Gallo and the newcomer to the industry, Facts & Fiction, is set to flare up again, with the news that Facts & […]

The Caprivi commander who exposed Inkatha hit squads is angry he wasn’t called as a witness in the trial of Magnus Malan, report Mehlo Mvelase and Ann Eveleth THE man who lifted the veil of secrecy once shrouding Inkatha Freedom Party-aligned hit- squads in KwaZulu-Natal launched a scathing attack this week on the prosecuting team […]

M&G Reporter A fuss this week over a personal secretary to Nelson Mandela who posed for Hustler magazine offers an alternative explanation for the decline of South Africa’s porn industry: that the smut merchants don’t recognise a golden opportunity. Lilian Arrison, a secretary at the president’s official Cape Town residence, submitted her portrait to the […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson NEED relief from mind-dulling television? Take a dose of Death-Defying Acts on at Johannesburg’s Civic Theatre until December 21 – three brilliant, hilarious and incisive one-act playlets by David Mamet, Woody Allen and Elaine May. They are thematically interwoven glimpses of urban America, all employing sparkling dialogue to parody and penetrate the […]

Joshua Amupadhi SECONDARY schools in KwaThema, east of Johannesburg, came to a standstill this week when a small group of pupils stopped 10 000 others from writing exams. Pupils were later bused to secret venues to complete their examinations. The police and army presence at schools, there since August, has also been beefed up. The […]

THIRTY five elephant in the Kruger Park have been darted from the air with sedatives, checked with an ultra-sound machine to ensure they are not pregnant, and given a hefty dose of the pachyderm pill in a novel experiment designed to test whether animal contraception can minimise the need for culling the Kruger National Park’s […]

Anne Eveleth DEPARTMENT of Land Affairs labour tenant rights facilitator Busani Ngubane says many labour tenant eviction cases are complicated by the involvement of a plethora of unions and organisations operating in the Vryheid area. “Some of these unions charge people money just to introduce them to a lawyer. Others get people to sign contracts […]

THREE weeks ago the Mail & Guardian attempted to provoke public debate with a front page editorial advocating the introduction of something along the lines of the United States primary elections to choose a successor to Nelson Mandela as leader of the African National Congress and – by implication – president of South Africa. The […]

Hazel Friedman YUCK. Urgh. Gross. The Pits! These are some of the four-letter responses usually evoked by the following question: “What is your opinion of the giant statue of gold miner George Harrison towering over the Bruma- Eastgate intersection?” And these responses were elicited prior to the sudden appearance (outgrowth might be a better term) […]

Angella Johnson DURING winter months the joints in Percy Stellenberg’s jaw become stiff and sore as if in need of oiling. Come summer time the right side of his face is distorted by massive swelling, and pain continues to be a feature of his daily life. In any season his sense of smell is confused […]

Madeleine Wackernagel BRITISH AEROSPACE (BAe), a front runner in the bidding to replace the ageing Impala trainers, is taking a 20% stake in Advanced Technologies & Engineering (ATE), which supplies the integrated avionics systems for the South African Air Force’s Pilatus “Astra” trainer and the Rooivalk attack helicopter. The value of the shareholding was not […]

Playwright JONATHAN HARVEY also wrote the screenplay for Beautiful Thing. It’s been called a fantasy, but here he argues that it could be true … PEOPLE think of Beautiful Thing as my first play, when in fact it’s my seventh. But though they’re technically wrong, they are right in a way – it was the […]

Huge pressure has been put on ousted Free State premier Patrick Lekota to abandon the provincial leadership battle, angering ANC members. Rehana Rossouw reports from the turbulent province PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela this week offered Patrick “Terror” Lekota a Cabinet post if, for the sake of party unity, he agreed to withdraw from the contest for […]

The National Arts Council candidates have been shortlisted to 18 people. HAZEL FRIEDMAN attended the open hearings this week THE 18 nominees for South Africa’s first National Arts Council have been announced. The list of names, which were chosen after public interviews with 33 shortlisted candidates, has already been submitted to Minister of Arts, Culture, […]

Max Gebhardt THE rand’s latest fall will push inflation higher, demanding the restrictive monetary policy which has previously forced up interest rates, Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals warns. In an exclusive interview with the Mail & Guardian, Stals also says it is anyone’s guess where the embattled currency will settle. “Any person willing to predict […]

The notion of a global phone company is fast becoming a reality as deregulation spreads, writes Mark Tran THE race to become the first global phone company has taken a dramatic twist with British Telecom’s (BT) planned acquisition of MCI, the United States’s second-biggest long-distance company. Now, only AT&T and the BT-MCI alliance have the […]

The new Labour Court’s president says the Public Works Department’s motto should be `we do not serve; we sleep’, report Marion Edmunds and Mungo Soggot THE Judge President of South Africa’s new Labour Court, Judge John Myburgh, has slammed the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) and has savaged the government for ineptitude in implementing the new […]

sales Mungo Soggot THE new government’s first privatisation deal – the successful sale of six SABC radio stations – took a severe blow this week when the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA)conceded in court its decision on one of the sales was invalid. Counsel representing the IBA, which is fighting claims by Naledi Media Investments that […]

Joshua Amupadhi Accused serial killer Moses Sithole had set up an organisation to campaign against the abuse of women and children, the Pretoria Supreme Court was told this week The man alleged to have slain 37 women and a toddler set himself up as a champion of the oppressed, using “official-looking” letters typed by a […]

Shaun de Waal CONTRARYto reports – including one in this paper last week – and information supplied by retrenched staff, Ravan Press is not closing its doors. Gerald de Villiers, executive chairman of Hodder &Stoughton Educational and Ravan, writes:”Yes, Ravan Press, in which Hodder has held a majority shareholding for several years, has recently been […]

voters’ cards Anthony Kunda in Lusaka THE Zambian government has sworn it will prosecute former president Kenneth Kaunda in the face of upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections on November 18. Kaunda has been holding rallies around the country in the last week, asking people to turn their voters’ registration cards over to his party, so […]

ANC members who were part of township self- defence units have joined the call for an extension of the cut-off date for amnesty, writes Eddie Koch HUNDREDS of former militiamen – members of ANC-aligned self-defence units (SDUs) as well as Inkatha’s self-protection units (SPUs) who once fought each other in pitched battles on the East […]

OPERA: Coenraad Visser PACT OPERA first staged this astounding production of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Hollander in 1991. The Teatro Colon team, Roberto Oswald and Anibal Lapiz, created a visual spectacle the envy of any major opera house. The cast too, led by South Africans Wicus Slabbert and Marieta Napier, would have done any major artistic […]

Cheating scientists in many countries have national committees to answer to, write Peter Lennon and Lesley Cowling, but not in South Africa or Britain THERE was a time when we stood to attention at the mention of “scientific” research. But the discovery last week of fraud by a researcher at the United States National Institutes […]

Rehana Rossouw THE campaign against gangsterism and drugs will intensify in the next few weeks and Cape Town’s Waterfront could see more protests, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) said this week. Last weekend, Achmat Najjaar, the brother of a prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Thafier Najjaar, was shot and killed during a clash with the […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN previews Johnny Golightly’s latest collection called Love: A Retrospective WHAT do you do when the romance goes out of your relationship? “You put on your clothes and go home.” Those words are familiar to all of us who’ve gone looking for love in all the wrong beds. But to artist John Anthony Boerma, […]

Corruption and incompetence at Eskom’s Soweto division have led to a management shake-up, reports Andy Duffy ESKOM is quietly replacing top staff at one of its largest divisions after an independent investigation uncovered rampant corruption and incompetence among senior management. The parastatal declines to detail the shake- up at the Soweto division, saying its plans […]

ONE of the curious aspects of the African National Congress in government is its paradoxical insistence on exercising its authority when it is not needed and failure to do so when it is. The paradox was on display again this week, with regard to Zaire and the leadership struggle in the Free State. When Nelson […]