Staff Reporter

Institute of Race Relations president says apartheid was not a crime against humanity, reports Mungo Soggot IN a furious debate over apartheid’s status as a crime against humanity, Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa this week lashed out at Cape Town academic Professor Hermann Giliomee as “standing in the trenches of apartheid”. At the eye of the […]

Suzy Bell IT’S based on the premise that the spirit of ubuntu meets advertising on a hot and heady Apple Macintosh keyboard with a manic mouse tripping on orange juice spiked with the wicked realism of raw design. Seldom before has there been such a brilliant collaboration of skilled and raw talent as seen in […]

Space is the place: From a locally made satellite to an interview with an American astronaut and a book on the Hubble telescope. Lesley Cowling reports THE object that will be South Africa’s first satellite to circle the earth is, at first sight, unimpressive. It’s a blueish box with a metal ring on one side […]

GROUP 1 NIGERIA Previous appearances: 1962, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994 Record: Played 50, won 23, drawn 15, lost 12, goals for 82, against 52 Best result: Sierra Leone 6-2 Worst result: Ghana 1-4 Key player: Midfielder Augustine Okocha Coach: Amodu Shaibu Rankings: 13 Africa, 63 world Nickname: Super Eagles GUINEA Appearances: 1974, […]

Just a couple of months after the last competitors’ bus got lost in Atlanta, cities have begun the race to host the 2004 Games. John Duncan reports THEY are not at all what you would expect. There are 15 of them, slightly stern-looking, definitely bleary-eyed, weighed down by details of infrastructure and facilities and statistics, […]

Telford Vice IN SEARCH OF WILL CARLING: AN EPIC JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA TO THE RUGBY WORLD CUP by Charles Jacoby (Simon & Schuster, R90) RUGGER-BUGGERS who buy this book before spotting the subtitle may believe they are getting 343 pages of Rugby World Cup 1995 as distilled through the pen of an erudite Englishman. The […]

Mungo Soggot THE selection of Professor Sam Nolutshungu as the University of the Witwatersrand’s new vice-chancellor may have grabbed the headlines in South Africa, but it passed by the United States university town of Rochester. The local newspaper had not heard of Nolutshungu, a political science professor at Rochester, never mind his sensational victory before […]

THERE can surely be no more glaring example of the bully-boy nature of South African rugby administration than the defeat of Brian van Rooyen in his bid to oust Louis Luyt as president of the Transvaal Rugby Football Union (TRFU). For what Luyt managed to do was turn the issue from one of what Van […]

The process of electing a new vice-chancellor has been steeped in irony, but finally students and staff have a spring in their step, writes Philippa Garson IN the space of a few months the University of the Witwatersrand has, against all expectation, picked up its scattered pieces and moulded a fragile new unity for itself. […]

Glynis O’Hara WHILE prisons may no longer accuse people with artistic ideas of being “pansies”, and open their doors to a range of creativity projects, they most certainly do not want to pay for them. “We’ve been forced to shut down,” says Gary Friedman of Puppets In Prison. “We’ve worked for the past seven months […]

Joshua Amupadhi THE 17 universities and technikons created for blacks are struggling to survive in the post-apartheid era. Some face closure unless drastic rescue efforts are put in train. About 100 000 students are at the universities with more than 30 000 at the technikons. The warning about their plight comes from Professor Cecil Abrahams, […]

Marion Edmunds THE Home Affairs Department has quietly dropped the fee charged to foreigners to marry South African citizens. In July this year, Home Affairs introduced regulations which made it obligatory for foreigners to pay a set charge of almost R7 000 should they wish to marry South African citizens. At the time, the department […]

Julia Grey MEASURING the effects of the space environment on satellites may seem like highly specialised technology, beyond most of us. But it’s child’s play to two groups of school children who have been actively involved in designing experiments that will travel on the Sunsat microsatellite in 1997. Niki Steenkamp, an engineer at the Engineering […]

John Hooper in Rome ITALY’S most celebrated dramatist, Dario Fo, has been left partially blind by a stroke, he revealed in an interview published last week. For several months he had also had problems with his speech and memory. In July 1995, Fo called off a tour of Europe. At the time, he was reported […]

The soldiers of Five Recce have never hesitated when it comes to charging into battle, but the regiment has been more tentative in adapting to change in South Africa, writes Stefaans Brmmer PHALABORWA is the type of mining town where streets are still named after the likes of presidents Steyn and Kruger. Its burghers give […]

With chaos and conflict spreading, Zaire, the UN and Western nations are seeing the consequences of their callous neglect, reports Chris McGreal THEODENNE KALENDA waited uncertainly one side of an invisible line that marks the border between Zaire and Rwanda, halfway across a bridge over the Ruzizi river. His neighbours watched from the hillside behind […]

IAN SANSOM takes a look at the Christmas blockbuster crop, and finds Frederick Forsyth the best of a bad lot HAVING thoroughly pursued my researches, I can report that the hyped-up, hard-sell hardback tends to have a funny smell. It’s not the smell of the boards and glue, it’s the smell of mediocrity. This despite […]

Aspasia Karras A REPRESENTATIVE piece at the current Hong Kong Biennale art show is a small pile of Chairman Mao Zedong’s little red book. In the context of threats and statements from Beijing to prevent future marches in Hong Kong, it presents a critical counterpoint to the generally upbeat approach most Hong Kong citizens appear […]

CAROLINE SULLIVAN thought live hip-hop was boring – until she saw the Fugees play in London HOW big is “big”? In the Fugees’s case, big enough that Sony had to stop making their number-one single, Killing Me Softly, because it wouldn’t get out of the charts over the summer to make way for the next […]

Marion Edmunds THE Minister of Public Service, Zola Skweyiya, acknowledged this week he was in trouble. At a meeting held behind closed doors in Parliament, he bluntly sketched the serious problems undermining transformation in the public service and appealed to parliamentarians, officials and international development experts for help. It is expected that the Parliamentary Portfolio […]

A student’s refusal to pray has highlighted religious and racial discrimination at Stellenbosch, writes Marion Edmunds A PETITE 21-year-old Stellenbosch University student says she has been repeatedly heckled, abused and imtimidated by fellow residence students because she refuses to pray after meals. Lawyers’ letters are flying between the student, Yvonne Malan, and student leaders of […]

They came as robbers to a house in Lenasia but they left as murderers of a young boy. Angella Johnson reports on the killing that shocked a community HE was only five years old. A boy delighted with himself after finding his lost piggy bank. But when Yaaseen Ebrahim rushed out of his room rattling […]

Short of funds to fight his court battle, Bantu Holomisa has asked the president for his Transkei military pension, reports Stefaans Brmmer BANTU HOLOMISA, gearing up for a bruising and expensive court battle to be reinstated as an African National Congress member, this week asked President Nelson Mandela to give him his Transkei military pension. […]

Mail & Guardian Reporters DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki comes in for a scathing attack in Bantu Holomisa’s court challenge against his expulsion from the African National Congress. Holomisa says in his affidavit served on the African National Congress this week that he had cleared his Truth and Reconciliation Commission submission with President Nelson Mandela, who […]

The truth commission’s Alex Boraine said the confessions would start. Last week, the perpetrators began to tell their stories. In the latest in our guest writer series, poet Antjie Krog listens to the different voices FOR six months the Truth Commission has listened to the voices of victims. The first narrative, focused and clear, cut […]

BOOKS: The latest from the literary world Courageous anti-apartheid publisher Ravan is no more. TONYMORPHET pays tribute to those who first published JM Coetzee and others RAVAN Press has finally closed its doors. Not even the name could be saved as it was swallowed by Hodder &Stoughton Educational. It’s no use mourning the loss – […]

Claudia Braude PRIOR to one of the lectures of the three candidates for the position of vice- chancellor at Wits last week, I bumped into Professor Alan Kemp, deputy vice-chancellor. The last time I’d seen him he was in the process of reviewing the continued viability of Wits University Press. “Have you succeeded in shutting […]

Not Quite Friday Night is back on our TV screens with a change of name.ANDREW WORSDALE talks to the director ON entering the room I notice an ashtray crammed with stompies and half-sucked cough sweets; a soundtrack features some eccentric interviewee and I catch the end of a sentence, ” … the heat then starts […]

Matric exam leaks have resulted in large- scale reshuffling within the Gauteng Department of Education, report Joshua Amupadhi, Stuart Hess and David Shapshak SECURITY for the matric exams was so lax and the loopholes so many that the Gauteng Department of Education this week replaced many of the 700 officials of its examinations unit. This, […]

Rehana Rossouw PEOPLE Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) campaign in Cape Town is beginning to affect police attempts to combat crime, the South African Police Service (SAPS) claimed this week. Western Cape police representative, senior superintendent John Sterrenberg, said between April and last week Pagad held 43 demonstrations and marches which have been policed by […]

Despite the loss of many familiar faces in the labour movement, unions deny a lack of leadership, write Jacquie Golding-Duffy and Anthony Kunda THE exodus in 1994 of many experienced unionists into the government and business dealt the labour movement a massive blow. When the likes of Jay Naidoo, Alec Erwin and Cyril Ramaphosa left, […]

FILM: Derek Malcolm IT IS difficult to imagine a sillier film than From Dusk Till Dawn, but the fact that it was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez, supposedly two of the most talented tyros Hollywood wants so badly to make its own, renders the enterprise the more absurd. Is this schizophrenic […]