Prospects of a large church congress in Zimbabwe has given impetus to the gay rights movement, writes Iden Wetherell in Harare ZIMBABWE’s embattled gay community, the target of an abusive campaign last year by President Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwean church leaders, is bracing for another confrontation with the same opponents. A proposal by international Protestant […]
TENNIS: Mick Cleary and Jon Henderson in London THERE is scarcely an inch of the vast Wimbledon complex which is not landscaped with signposts, manned by livery-clad information guides carrying sandwich-boards or outlined in the bulging information brochures. The only thing the authorities forgot to include for the thronging crowd was an explanation of just […]
The SABC’s expansion into rural bureaux has provoked a mixed response from radio stations, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy SABC radio news is planning to expand its operation by establishing eight rural bureaux at an initial start-up cost of about R3,2-million. SABC radio news managing editor Alwyn Kloppers says increasing the number of newsrooms in rural areas […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift Boy Louw said it best. “Looks for the scoreboards” was his superbly unique and ungrammatical reply to criticism of how the Spingboks played. So it should be with the 43-18 scoreline from this week’s test against Fiji at Loftus Versfeld. This was not an inspired perfomance. But it was a winning one, […]
A seasoned politician remarked this week that “there is no message like the one delivered by the electorate”. For some of the thousands of candidates who contested last week’s local government polls in the Durban Metro, that message must be a bitter pill to swallow. Poor Kathuravaloo Vallaraman, who contested the sparsely-populated Hawaan Nature Reserve […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile Since the Market Theatre opened in 1976, Janet Suzman has come home to do a play three times — almost exactly once a decade. And that, says theatre boss John Kani, is just about as much of her as they can take: “She’s a monster! An absolute monster! She presents a […]
Muslim members of Mozambique’s Parliament are trying to pass a law recognising the days of Eid as public holidays. Andrew Meldrum reports from Boane Sabati Omar breaks from his work building a mosque to explain how Islam is growing in Boane, a rural area in southern Mozambique. “Every month we see somebody convert,” says Omar, […]
Despite top-level intervention, Amplats sees little hope of an end to the illegal strike, report adeleine Wackernagel and Jacquie Golding-Duffy Production at Rustenburg Platinum Mines has ground to a halt as the last shift of 7 000 workers went on strike this week. With 21 000 workers already dismissed, the mass sacking sets a record […]
Lynda Loxton Boland Bank, based in Paarl, has been transformed over the last year from a relatively small, mostly Western Cape bank into a more sophisticated market player serving the country as a whole. Not surprisingly, the process has placed some strain on management and revealed weaknesses in bad-debt control, which it is working hard […]
Philippa Garson OVERSEAS donors are still investing in higher education, despite fears that the escalation of violent protest and crime on campuses would scare them off. The executive director of the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa, Roy Jackson, said he would be “very surprised” if the campus turmoil “didn’t cause a great deal of […]
A $4,5-billion poker game between diamond trader De Beers and the world’s biggest diamond mine, Argyle, will come to a head during the next seven months. Argyle of Australia — part-owned by Britain’s RTZ mining conglomerate — walked out of De Beers’ marketing cartel this month, a move some saw as the beginning of the […]
A huge explosion which injured 70 people in July 1987 and was blamed on `ANC terrorists’ was almost certainly the work of the police. Rehana Rossouw reports A bomb which former state president PW Botha described in July 1987 as a “callous act committed by terrorists under the godless control of criminals” was almost certainly […]
M&G Crime Correspondent Angella Johnson, who spent 10 years working on papers like The Guardian, London Times and Los Angeles Times, finds herself at loggerheads with the SAPS `Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as […]
The West Coast diamond group is following De Beers’ lead in targeting higher-priced stones, writes Lynda Loxton West Coast diamond companies have had mixed fortunes in recent years, not least because of the dumping of low-quality diamonds on the world market by Russia. The agreement reached by De Beers’ Central Selling Organisation (CSO) and Russia […]
Julian Drew At the colourful and emotional send-off for the South African Olympic team last Sunday, the Olympic oath was read on behalf of the team by modern pentathlete Claud Cloete. While it is true that Cloete is only in the team courtesy of a wild card granted to athletes from developing countries to ensure […]
BOXING: Gavin Evans THE first and last time Sugarboy Malinga and Vincenzo Nardinello met it was all hugs, kisses and fun and games in foreign accents. Fun’n’games, in fact, is one of the things this Italian enjoys most about the fight game, even when he is on the wrong side of a beating, as he […]
Gaye Davis THE media are in danger of becoming unwelcome guests in Parliament. Speaker Dr Frene Ginwala has ordered an inquiry into the justification for the R1-million paid out by taxpayers each year to accommodate journalists in its precincts. Attempts by the Mail & Guardian to get a copy of the report on the investigation, […]
Patrick Donovan in London The mysterious Yasuo Hamanaka, the disgraced chief copper dealer at Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, has found himself cast in the sinister role of “Mr Big” in what appears to have been a worldwide attempt to rig the global commodities markets. For more than 10 years, he has apparently carried out more than […]
Justin Pearce A schoolteacher seeking paternity leave, a group of prisoners claiming to have been assaulted and a schoolboy defending his right to have long hair are among the stories told inside the cardboard folders stacked on the desk of Human Rights Commission (HRC) member Pansy Tlakula. Upstairs in the stately Houghton office suite occupied […]
Mark Tran in New York Billionaires from the tiger economies of the Far East are gaining on Bill Gates, chairman of software giant Microsoft, and Warren Buffett, America’s super investor, as the world’s richest individuals. While Gates and Buffett are still lording it for the second year running in Forbes magazine’s 10th annual ranking of […]
Eddie Koch The young bull elephant that charged a group of tourists in the Pilanesberg Game Reserve last week and killed the professional hunter who went to shoot it the next day are the latest victims of a new set of economic and political problems troubling the managers of South Africa’s burgeoning game reserve industry. […]
The jury is still out on whether the new framework for small business policy can be put into action, writes Aspasia Karras The White Paper on a National Strategy for the Development of Small Business in South Africa, endorsed in March 1995, is finally kicking into life. The national Small Business Act was tabled in […]
The legal fraternity has come together to analyse the validity of the new Constitution. Mungo Soggot reports ON the second floor of a new office block at No 33 Hoof Street in Braamfontein four big video screens are watched by a clutch of dedicated smokers. Inside the smokeless but stuffy room next door the closed- […]
Dullah Omar has admitted the justice system is in crisis, but he’s also upbeat about resolving the problems, report Gaye Davis, Justin Pearce and Mungo Soggott A crisis of confidence has hit the South African justice system with threats of unprecedented strike action in the prosecution service, glaring inconsistencies in sentencing and bail and major […]
South Africa’s top linguists are to wrestle with the practicalities of 11 official languages at a conference in Midrand this weekend. Marion Edmunds reports FORMER Robben Islander Dr Neville Alexander has to unravel one of the tightest knots tied by the politicians of the post-apartheid order. At a crucial conference on Saturday, Alexander and the […]
Appropriation or plagiarism? What’s the difference? HAZEL FRIEDMAN grapples with a debate raging in South Africa’s conceptual art circles ESAU did it to Jacob, Brahms might have done it to Beethoven and Shakespeare has been accused of doing it to his assistant. History is filled with the famous, talented and treacherous who have indulged in, […]
There is always a suspicion, when one offers a fond farewell to a man who is a rival, that tributes are born more of relief at seeing the back of him than respect for his achievements. It is therefore a measure of our admiration for Ken Owen that we express the hope his formal retirement […]
Mungo Soggot An extraordinary legal decision involving a controversial lawyer lies behind the case of acid- burn victim Bernadette Gibson, which has provoked an uproar over damages awards by the supreme court. The attorney who represented Gibson, Peter Soller, is an unrehabilitated insolvent who specialises in championing the causes of victims of medical negligence. She […]
The banks may yet repent if money market stability does not hold, writes Madeleine Wackernagel A volatile interest rate climate is not conducive to long-term investment planning, either by individuals or big business. And while the surprise rate cut by Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (Absa) this week — closely followed by the other leading […]
`Terror’ Lekota’s position as premier of the Free State lies in the hands of an ANC delegation which will decide whether he has overstepped the power of his position, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy The knives are out for Free State premier Patrick “Terror” Lekota, even as a delegation appointed by President Nelson Mandela prepares to defuse […]
TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj is not having an easy time trying to become the Cabinet’s Robin Hood. First he came under fire for suggesting the idea of taxing petrol to hit the rich, leaving diesel as the people’s fuel. And then the Law Society this week lambasted his proposed shake-up of the state’s accident insurance […]
Stan Katz There has been much criticism, debate and misinformation surrounding the sale of six SABC radio stations and the role of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the process. This is a pity because the environment which will ultimately be created, will in all likelihood, be much healthier for broadcasters. The IBA is faced with […]