Staff Reporter

It should be said at the outset that the controversy which has developed over the appointment of South Africa’s chief justice does not involve great issues of principle. It is little more than a petty squabble, essentially over personalities. But it is nevertheless a damaging one for the judiciary. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of […]

Mungo Soggot Judges across the country are taking sides in the furious controversy over who is to succeed Michael Corbett as South Africa’s chief justice. In one of the most divisive rows to hit the judiciary since the 1950s, some 100 judges have backed appeal court Judge Hennie van Heerden against Ismail Mahomed — the […]

The Springboks recently lost a test series on home soil against the All Blacks for the first time in their history, but it’s not the first time Louis Luyt has been embroiled in controversy. Katy Bauer reports A CROWDED Johannesburg bar during one of the recent matches between South Africa and New Zealand. The Boks […]

Johannesburg’s annual Arts Alive Festival might be alive and kicking, but several Gauteng-based artists are digging in their heels over the alleged flagrant “disrespect paid to local talent”, while overseas participants are “treated like royalty”. Poets Lesego Rampolokeng, Lisa Combrinck and Boitumelo Mofokeng are just three of a growing number of enraged artists who have […]

Alasdair Fotheringham explains why Miguel Indurain, five-time winner of the Tour de France, is riding in Spain this week against his will MOST Spaniards are loyal first to their family, second to their home town and only considered their country as an afterthought, said the writer and lover of Spain, Gerald Brenan. Had Brenan been […]

Alex Brummer in London THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to ask shareholders for an increase in its capital base after a sharp deterioration in the Fund’s cash position. Michel Camdessus, the managing director, has indicated that he would like to see the fund’s quotas — the equivalent of its capital base — doubled from […]

Nick Varley THE outsiders, Pulp, have won the Mercury Music Prize and presented the R175 000 to the music business charity aiding Bosnia. With the hot pre-award favourites, Oasis, absent on tour in America, judges narrowed the short-list of 10 down to two contenders: Pulp and the veteran folk performer, Norma Waterson. Simon Frith, chairman […]

A power struggle within the ANC was behind the Tokyo Sexwale drugs probe, reports Stefaans BrUmmer GAUTENG Premier Tokyo Sexwale this week refused to bail Deputy President Thabo Mbeki out of his embarrassment over allegations that he had been behind a drugs probe into Sexwale after the 1994 elections. In the process, Sexwale and National […]

The past and present Springbok captains clash when Francois Pienaar’s Transvaal take on Gary Teichmann’s Natal this weekend RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE is little left really for Transvaal this season but to pick up the pieces. A win against Natal at King’s Park in Durban this weekend will perhaps keep them in the running for […]

The publishing industry has been hit by speculation of a take-over of Finance Week. Mungo Soggot and Peta Thornycroft report The managing director of Times Media Limited (TML), Roy Paulson, this week confirmed he had confronted the editor of the Financial Mail (FM) and TML director, Nigel Bruce, over rumours about an extraordinary scheme to […]

The archetypal Nineties youth was just the creation of marketing hype, writes Martin Wroe THEY are the no-job, no-prospect, no-hope teenagers and twentysomethings, the so-called “slacker” generation — except that these archetypal youths of the Nineties may not actually exist. Speakers at a conference on European youth this week will tell delegates that Generation X […]

He didn’t exactly kill with kindness but there is a charm to Eugene de Kock that belies the murderous work he carried out for the apartheid government. Eddie Koch reports IT was a balmy autumn afternoon back in 1993 and Eugene de Kock was sitting, as arranged, on the terrace of the Centurion Park Hotel […]

Greg Streak is the first South African artist to win a place in one of the world’s great sculpture schools, reports SUZY BELL AT LAST, a white male South African who doesn’t spend his days whingeing about feeling dislocated, alienated and oh so lonesome in the new South Africa. Instead, Durban artist Greg Streak (25) […]

M&G Reporter If Ismail Mahomed does get the post of chief justice, there will be a sweet irony about it when he moves into the office in Bloemfontein. When he appeared before the Appellate Division in his days as South Africa’s first black silk he was forced to flee across the border before dusk in […]

Five years of economic expansion in the US and the stock market is riding high, but the sceptics believe confidence is being confused with complacency. Tom Petruno reports The stock market got it right. As usual. While the bond market continued to have its ups and downs in August and early September, sweating over the […]

FINE ART: Julia Teale The insularity and complacency of the Cape Town art scene has become a commonplace of South African art journalism. The only solution for artists is often to move northward. But the last few years have seen the birth and maturation of a number of exhibition spaces, such as The Castle and […]

Mail & Guardian Reporters The question about why there are virtually no photographs of the judges in the Appellate Division has been answered by the librarian at the Rand Supreme Court. She told a reporter that if the media published the judges’ photos, it would be “putting their lives in jeopardy.” She refused to tell […]

off Mungo Soggot THE appeal court judge who called on Ismail Mahomed this week to withdraw from the race for the position of chief justice was a champion of apartheid Emergency legislation during the late 1980s. Described as a “vigorous and ingenious defender of Emergency authority”, Judge Joos Hefer sat on a string of Emergency […]

BAFANA KHUMALO follows a new musical drama, One Voice, through two performances — one in Soweto and the other at the Civic Theatre FRIDAY morning at the Market Theatre complex, Johannesburg. A bearded, pipe-smoking man is trying to contain himself. The source of his discomfort is the cast of a play who are drifting in […]

The Dutch queen has overstepped her authority in ousting the Dutch ambassador to South Africa, reports Bart Luirink The Dutch ambassador in South Africa, Eduard Roell, has been reassigned as ambassador to Belgium because of an alleged extramarital affair, months before the official end of his term. According to a leading Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, […]

Vanessa Cooke, director of the newly relocated Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg, talks to GLYNIS O’HARA Over 150 000 primary school children nationwide have seen Broken Dreams, a play workshopped and written by Zakes Mda to help them ward off and deal with child abuse and prevent the spread of TB and AIDS. The play […]

highest court The Bill allowing abortion was tabled in Parliament this week. But Catholic bishops have instructed their lawyers to oppose it in the Constitutional Court. Gaye Davis reports SOUTH Africa’s Catholic bishops intend challenging the liberalisation of the country’s abortion laws in the Consitutional Court. The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has instructed […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift IT is, given the length and public ugliness of the rugby season, gratifying that some semblance of order is about to come back into our sporting lives with the first hints of the budding cricket season ahead. This weekend there comes the chance to shake off some of the rust of inactivity […]

Sasco’s influence has been waning since the political order changed, reports Joshua Amupadhi South Africa’s biggest student body, the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) is sliding in popularity just as it celebrates its fifth anniversary. Recent campus polls show Sasco is losing its grip on students’ representative councils (SRCs) — turf it had secured over […]

Eddie Koch EVIDENCE in Colonel Eugene de Kock’s mitigation hearing suggests clandestine support from the police for Inkatha paramilitary units to attack ANC supporters in the early 1990s — long after the movement was unbanned — was not a maverick operation by members of the Vlakplaas unit for personal gain. De Kock told the court […]

Ian Traynor in Berlin Germany and France this week signalled their determination to merge their currencies in January 1999 as part of an overall European Monetary Union. Despite misgivings from Britain about a single currency, key finance and banking officials from the two countries moved to dovetail their fiscal policies before this weekend’s meeting of […]

After being overlooked for a long time Fani Madida is back in the South African squad for the Four Nations tournament, and after their first two matches the team tops the log SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi RUNNING onto the field against Kenya last weekend in the first game of the Simba Four Nations Cup was a […]

Richard Thomas in London The World Bank is privately warning that Haitian peasants could be forced to emigrate in order to find jobs, in stark contrast to the bank’s public endorsement of a “people first” development strategy. Ahead of the bank’s annual meeting in Washington in a fortnight’s time, aid agencies said the disclosure would […]

Kevin Mitchell blames the folly of weak and stupid men for a criminal act waiting to happen as they gamble all in Las Vegas THE brave gentlemen of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who issued Evander Holyfield with a medical certificate last week clearing him to challenge Mike Tyson for a version of the world […]

Questions are being asked about Thabo Mbeki’s deal with the police commissioners over the truth commission, reports Stefaans BrUmmer Truth commission investigators have been left frustrated by an “intervention” of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi which they say gave former police generals a strategic breather before they face tough […]

Playwright and poet, Maishe Maponya, is Johannesburg’s latest high power cultural appointment. He shares his ideas with HAZEL FRIEDMAN ‘I WAS called an angry young man, you know,” Maishe Maponya laughs gently at the recollection. With bene-volent smile and trademark scull cap framing his face like a tight-fitting halo, he looks positively papal in disposition […]

An American who sued Noseweek and the Cape Argus bit off more than he could chew, reports Rehana Rossouw WEALTHY American dentist Robert Hall clearly didn’t know what he was getting into when he took on the formidable, and famously eccentric, investigative journalist Martin Welz. Hall sued Welz for R550 000 and the Cape Argus […]