Staff Reporter

Frank Swoboda and Don Phillips in Washington USAir Chairman Stephen M Wolf says there is no room for his airline in the proposed international marketing agreement between American Airlines and British Airways (BA). “We simply do not believe we can be a part of it,” Wolf said, signalling a further rupture in the relationship with […]

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 […]

Marion Edmunds Public Administration Minister Zola Skweyiya has had to bang heads together in the Presidential Review Commission — the body appointed by President Nelson Mandela to investigate transformation in the public service — to get it to do some work. Before this week, the multi-million rand commission met only four times since it was […]

Julius Zava in Harare Zimbabweans are concerned that the ruling Zanu-PF party is amending the constitution willy-nilly, and is trampling on human rights and eroding judicial independence in the process. Since independence in 1980, Zanu-PF, which has 147 MPs out of a total 150, has amended the constitution 13 times. The 14th amendment has just […]

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 […]

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 […]

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) […]

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 […]

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 revelations that Swiss banks accepted Nazi gold show how history has become more a concatenation of symbols than a memory of experience, argues David Cesarani in London One of the intriguing questions arising from the latest “revelations” about the conduct of Swiss banks during and after World War II is why it took so […]

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 […]

MOTOR RACING: Alan Henry THE Mercedes baby has come of age. Heinz-Harald Frentzen has at last got the drive his ability deserves and has stolen a march on his bitter rival Michael Schumacher by getting it in the best car in Formula One, the Williams. The hiring of Frentzen represents a pre-emptive strike by the […]

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 […]

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 […]

While the great privatisation debate rages on, changes are taking place at grassroots level, writes Max Gebhardt The apparent change of heart by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on privatisation has been greeted as a positive move by both business and the government. Sam Shilowa, general secretary of Cosatu, endorsed partial privatisation […]

Marion Edmunds Parliament’s portfolio committees on tourism and environmental affairs have had MPs and senators reaching for their bikinis and sunhats. The committees are spending an estimated R300 000 on study tours abroad to Cuba, Jamaica and Bali. One of Gwen Mahlangu’s first tasks as Peter Mokaba’s replacement as chair of the National Assembly Portfolio […]

Scores of South Africans have joined the scramble for diamonds in Angola, reports John Liebenberg South Africans who are plundering Angola’s diamond fields have no respect for the country’s laws or Angolan sovereignty, according to officials in Luanda. Eighteen South Africans were imprisoned for eight days due to an “unfortunate mistake” by the Angolan government […]

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 […]

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 […]

JAZZ: Gwen Ansell Forget screams, moans and squishing noises. The sexiest sound in the world is a big fat horn line playing jazz. Irakere, or “The Forest”, last week’s jazz guests for Arts Alive, feature four horns. On saxes, Cesar Lopez provides the intellectual acrobatics and an ironic take on the more florid ballad numbers […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman I’M not sure whether Laura Godfrey-Isaac’s Evolution deserves to be dived into, pigged-out-on or treated like a pimple and popped. But that’s precisely the initial beauty of her (mis)anthropomorphic forms. Depending on a whole host of factors — some of them genetically determined — they can be seen as runny ice-cream […]

Without the appropriate investment incentives, foreign firms will not dash to develop Africa’s oil resources, reports Lynda Loxton Top oil industry representatives at this week’s Africa Upstream conference in Cape Town warned that Africa should not expect an “oil rush” unless African countries did a lot more to provide the kind of investment incentives and […]

Jim Jarmusch’s films have finally arrived in South Africa. The director and star Johnny Depp talk about their latest movie ‘WHY don’t you take a year off from this film stuff and play Hamlet?” Marlon Brando asked his co-star in Don Juan DeMarco, Johnny Depp. “I was very honoured,” says Depp. “I think it would […]

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 […]

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 […]

in The Mark Gevisser Profile Homeless ‘king of culture’ The depression that sets in, as I take a late- afternoon walk around the Newtown Cultural Precinct with Christopher Till, is not so much a result of the desolation that surrounds me as of the gap between this desolation and its creator’s vision of urban redemption. […]

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 […]