give-and-take The Constitution: The Constitutional Assembly has produced its last working draft of the final Constitution before the May 8 deadline. It will be finalised at a bosberaad this weekend, reports Marion Edmunds AFRICAN National Congress MP Willie Hofmeyr’s eyes are large pools of limpid exhaustion as he gazes onto the first page of the […]
Ricardo Dunn The Bloemfontein man who was convicted last month of killing a dog by inserting a firecraker into its rectum has been relieved from his community service sentence at the SPCA. The Bloemfontein SPCA applied to the magistrate’s court to revoke its decision after it received hundreds of letters from the public and potential […]
Sevens South Africa’s team for the Hong Kong Sevens tournament is largely unknown and they’ll be coming up against some big names RUGBY: Adrian Oosthuizen SOUTH AFRICAN rugby fans will be hoping that some of the sparkle which saw the country emerge as world champions in 1995 will rub off on the team of exciting […]
Bronwen Jones The old academic slanging match between excellence and relevance took on a new form this week when a South African scientist condemned the new Academy of Science of South Africa (Assa) as “elitist and unrepresentative”. Assa, launched this week as an initiative to unite South African scientists across ethnic lines, was lauded by […]
Ed O’Loughlin IT may be only 10 days since his painful divorce from Winnie, but President Mandela has already given plenty of indication that he intends to make up for lost time. On Wednesday the Irish President’s state visit to South Africa was overshadowed in the popular press back home by news that Mandela, footloose […]
DNA testing may be the only solution to the furore surrounding the ‘skull’ of Chief Hintsa, recently discovered in Scotland. Eddie Koch reports The controversial “head” of Chief Hintsa, which has been brought back to South Africa, will become the subject of an intriguing scientific study mixing high-tech genetic analysis with Xhosa oral history. Hintsa […]
Pieter-Dirk Uys, South Africa’s most playful political commentator, digs into the truth commission in an effort to define what is true and what is just another aspect of reality THROUGHOUT our lives, I bet you, we’ve all at one time or another sweated before a truth commission. As small children, in front of the giggling […]
CHANTING, placard-waving students occupied the Peninsula Technikon’s Student Representative Council offices on Wednesday, demanding the immediate reinstatement of its former president Solly Lamini. Following charges by a female student that she had been lewdly fondled by Lamini last year, a campus disciplinary committee found him guilty of sexual harassment. He was first suspended from the […]
Gaye Davis AFRICAN National Congress MP Carl Niehaus has charged Correctional Services Minister Dr Sipo Mzimela with displaying “one-upmanship” rather than the leadership necessary to effect change in South Africa’s prisons. In a letter to Mzimela this week, Niehaus said the “deepening crisis” in the Department of Correctional Services needed “strong, transparent and consultative leadership”. […]
With regard to the matter of Mandela vs Mandela, there is a degree of angst being suffered by some of our colleagues in the press: anxious hand-wringing over the question as to whether the media had the “right” to stick its collective nose into the matrimonial affairs of the president. Press freedom is very well, […]
Bullied by defence lawyers and still loyal to many of the high-ranking accused, Malan trial witness JP Opperman is going through hell on earth in court, writes Eddie Koch THERE is a courtroom axiom that says the cross-examiner who relies on intimidation instead of intellect probably lacks the factual information to expose flaws in the […]
Last week’s Budget allocated R43-million to the president and his two deputies. Rehana Rossouw examines how it will be spent PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s office will spend R21-million this year, Executive Deputy President Thabo Mbeki R9-million and Deputy President FW de Klerk R12-million. This pays for the smooth running of their offices and households: all three […]
A breach of copyright prosecution this week may signal the end of cheap textbooks for university students A major case of breach of copyright comes to court this week which academic publishers hope will put an end to illegal copying of university textbooks. It is hoped that the legal action will sound a warning across […]
economists Lynda Loxton Finance department officials this week warned against the growing temptation in some circles to deal with the inability of the economy to create enough new jobs by increasing the Budget deficit. Deputy director general Maria Ramos and special adviser Charles Stride were joined by leading economist Edward Osborne of Edey Rogers in […]
Jacquie Golding-Duffy A new national newspaper — The Teacher — is about to hit South Africa’s streets as the first independent monthly venture dedicated solely to teachers. The newspaper is published by the South African Newspaper Education Trust (Sanet), and the Mail & Guardian has been commissioned to help produce the publication which will be […]
Ann Eveleth Police have been accused of physically torturing a community activist and his relatives in northern KwaZulu-Natal with rubber tubes and electric shocks. The activist, Kevin Kunene, was hospitalised with internal injuries and a burst eardrum. Kunene is founding chairman of the KwaMbonambi Environmental Group. He says his injuries were caused by policemen from […]
Local people say they weren’t consulted when the government decided against mining, reports Eddie Koch People living in the Dukuduku forest on the outskirts of St Lucia are threatening to blockade the holiday town in peak season over the Easter weekend in protest against the Cabinet’s move this month to ban titanium mining in the […]
Secret discussions between King Mswati III and Nelson Mandela have left diplomats pondering the details of a policy they are to implement, reports Stefaans Brummer PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela is playing his cards in the Swaziland democratisation game close to his chest — so close, in fact, that Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo and South Africa’s Foreign […]
By negotiating forward cover, Eskom’s foreign loans cost it nothing, but they do cost the taxpayer, reports Simon Segal Eskom’s second samurai bond, a R550-million five-year issue, is expected to reflect an improved credit rating for Eskom and, by implication, South African borrowers in general. The loan is expected to be priced at 50 to […]
Bafana Khumalo Whitey didn’t know what hit him. One minute he was walking down the crowded early evening street and the next, bang! The film of alcohol in his eyes, which made the piss-smelling streets seem as safe as Disneyland, rudely cleared. A film which made the redlined people around him seem as friendly as […]
Dr Nkosazana Zuma, Minister of Health, in The Mark Gevisser Profile There’s a lesson Nkosazana Zuma learnt from the African National Congress training manuals when she was an operative that she continues to apply, now that she is in Cabinet: “If you sell your people out by giving in to the enemy, the enemy will […]
After their acrimonious TV debate, legal academic Dennis Davis and Human Rights Commission head Barney Pityana had a rapprochement in the parking lot, reports Justin Pearce Dennis Davis has withdrawn his call for Barney Pityana to resign as head of the Human Rights Commission. This was one outcome of a rapprochement between the two men […]
CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale JON AMIEL, the British director of Sommersby and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, turns away from romanticism to manipulative horror in Copycat, a very nasty thriller that seems to gloat over the violence the story deals with. Sigourney Weaver plays criminal psychologist Helen Hudson, an expert on serial killers, who gets involved […]
Runners hoping to win Saturday’s world cross coutry championships will have to contend with the formidable Kenyans, running as a team CROSS COUNTRY: Julian Drew IF YOU are not Kenyan and you want to win the world cross country championships, you not only need to be the best middle distance runner in the world, you […]
Kenneth Clarke came to town to promote privatisation in South Africa, reports Madeleine Wackernagel Privatisation, which warranted barely a mention in last week’s Budget, was brought back into the spotlight by Kenneth Clarke, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, this week. Selling off state assets would solve the problem of under-investment and output expansion in the […]
Does the SABC have the right to decide what is or isn’t savoury advertising? Jacquie Golding- Duffy reports on “code orange” Before the launch of the new South African Broadcasting Corporation in February, the corporation was banning what they thought to be unsavoury advertisements. A month after the launch, the SABC continues to censor. Prior […]
The Mail & Guardian has received exclusive documents detailing IBA salary packages. Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports Chairman of the Portfolio Committee on Communications, Saci Macozoma, emphatically denied this week that a gravy train existed at the Independent Broadcasting Authority. He said his committee would not be drawn into the salary issue and would not get involved […]
Justin Pearce Among the ornaments crowding every shelf in Johanna Claasens’s living room in Welkom is a mug with the inscription “Harmony Gold Mine – — 5 000 accident-free shifts”. It was given to her by a friend after Harmony’s worst accident ever — the Merriespruit mudslide in February 1994, which killed 17 people, including […]
David Beresford In the final adjournment on Tuesday in the case of Mandela vs Mandela — waiting for the Judge President of the Transvaal, Judge Frikkie Eloff, to deliver the by-now inevitable decree of divorce — the state president sat slumped in his chair, gazing into the middle distance. Gone was his bonhomie with the […]
Amichand Rajbansi, the much-pilloried leader of the Minority Front, is back in the political limelight and being hailed as a saviour, writes Ann Eveleth ‘Bengal Tiger” Amichand Rajbansi played the key role in securing KwaZulu-Natal’s Constitution last week. Walking out of the parliamentary chamber in Pietermaritzburg last Friday morning, bleary-eyed after the 24-hour negotiations which […]
If one goes back to the Dennis Davis article in this newspaper — which led to the furious counter-attack from Human Rights Commission head Barney Pityana, and this week’s impassioned television debate — it is striking how mild his criticism was. Davis lamented the commission’s “lack of profile” and the appointment of its members. He […]
Julian Drew PAULO GUERRA of Portugal was the second European home in last year’s world 10 000m final in Gothenburg, finishing eighth, one place behind Germany’s Stephane Franke. Ahead of them were the might of Ethiopia, Kenya and Morocco, the untouchables of world middle distance running. But for Guerra the world championships and track racing […]