Staff Reporter

Peta Thornycroft It’s been a long time coming, but Dirk Coetzee has had enough. He now regrets having spoken out in 1989 about killer squads in the South African Police. His confession six years ago about his own role in sanctioned murders and his breathtaking exposure of the rot deep in the South African security […]

Brendan Martin questions who will benefit from privatisation of state assets There would have been no prizes for predicting, a year or two ago, that the fragile unity of the new South Africa would founder on government action to secure “black economic empowerment”. But how many sages foresaw that it would be the ANC’s alliance […]

NIA spying row: Police accuse Dirk Coetzee of being ordered to spy on them — Coetzee denies all and wishes he’d never exposed Police hit Gaye Davis THE stand-off between police and the National Intelligence Agency over allegations that it was spying on senior policemen has sparked fears that co-operation between police and the agency […]

Gaye Davis PARLIAMENT’S watchdog over the intelligence community faces its most crucial test as it prepares to uncover the truth behind the police spying scandal. The Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence thrashed out its terms of reference for its investigation into police claims that top members were being spied on by agents of the National […]

Marion Edmunds The Foundation for Equality Before the Law has spent its last penny on its first rally, to be held in Pretoria on Saturday. Chairman of the Foundation, Dr Theo de Jager said this week that the Foundation was spending R22 000 on the rally at which it hoped to make its first public […]

Raymond Mhlaba, Eastern Cape Premier, in The Mark Gevisser Profile You catch the similarity first in the tone: the ponderous and spare mode of delivery, a schoolmasterish stress on each syllable. Then you catch it in the ability — perhaps borne of a half-lifetime in captivity — to control a large, even gangly, frame with […]

Vuyo Mvoko THE taxpayer is going to pay legal costs for former defence minister Magnus Malan and 10 senior officers in their murder trial which begins in early March in Durban. General Malan and his co-accused, including former SADF chief General “Kat” Liebenberg, are accused of complicity in the massacre of 13 civilians at KwaMakhuta […]

President Nelson Mandela’s high-profile Children’s Fund has netted more than R12- million since its inception last year, with a further R24-million pledged to it, while humbler NGOs are battling for money. Marion Edmunds reports Non-government organisations are frightened that President Nelson Mandela’s midas touch is proving so successful that it is threatening their own ability […]

Eddie Koch and Mehlo Mvelase Police either colluded in the Christmas Day massacre at Shobashobane or are guilty of negligence in the run-up to the attack that left 19 people dead in the KwaZulu-Natal village, according to a television documentary to be broadcast by SABC’s Agenda programme on Sunday night. The documentary includes strong criticisms […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE Congress of South African Trade Unions cannot count on the support of its main affiliate, the 300 000-strong National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in its planned anti- privatisation strike on Tuesday. Although, as a Cosatu affiliate, the NUM is bound to some degree by the federation’s decision to strike, ambivalence is being […]

Wits University faces the challenge of finding a non-racial solution to a racial problem with the Makgoba affair, writes Russell Ally Professor Etienne Mureinik correctly pointed out in his article (Mail & Guardian December 22 to January 4) that there are important, larger lessons to learn from the William Makgoba affair. It is unfortunate, however, […]

An uproar at the Peninsula Technikon following the administration’s failure last year to discipline a student for sexual harassment has once again highlighted this hidden problem, reports Rehana Rossouw SEVERAL months after a student at the Peninsula Technikon in Cape Town reported she had been lewdly fondled by SRC president Solly Lamini, there has been […]

Rehana Rossouw LIE detector tests for top ranking policemen aimed at rooting out corruption in the force have been temporarily suspended while police examine the practicalities of implementing the search for crooked cops nationwide. Last year, in a well-publicised exercise National Police Commissioner George Fivaz took a lie detector test — which he passed. Questions […]

Rehana Rossouw MURDER-accused Allan Stokes was 369 miles from Cape Town on Wednesday aboard the monohull Sunday Star, participating in the Cape-to-Rio race after a court postponed his trial to April 5 to accommodate his racing plans. Stokes is accused of murdering trainee diplomat Nithianandan “Elvis” Govender at the Vaal Dam last November. Govender’s family […]

Rehana Rossouw HILLBROW musician Solomon Sithole appeared briefly in the Johannesburg Magistrates’ Court last week following the fatal stabbing of his wife, women’s abuse campaigner Susan Sithole, last year. The alleged murder occured on November 25, International Day of No Violence Against Women. Susan Sithole had planned to leave her husband and had returned to […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy The Junior Rapportryersbeweeging (JRB), an Afrikaans mens-only cultural youth movement, will object against the SABC’s new proposed schedules in a bid to get the Independent Broadcasting Authority to hold a hearing. If the IBA decides that the submissions by the JRB are “serious enough” , it could stall the process for the SABC […]

John 8:32: “The truth shall make you free.” It is widely recognised that liberation takes many forms and that “freedom” was not finally won with the assumption of power by Nelson Mandela on May 11 last year. The horrendous matric results signpost the long walk to freedom still demanded of millions of our children before […]

Lungile Madywabe profiles four of the top footballers who will be thrilling soccer fans in the African Nations Cup SOME of the world’s greatest players will from this weekend grace South African soccer pitches. This is despite the debacle surrounding the withdrawal of champions Nigeria have the largest contingent of players plying their trade in […]

The Mail & Guardian and its journalists won a string of awards this year. The English Academy of Southern Africa awarded columnist Bafana Khumalo the Thomas Pringle Award for television reviews. The Kaiser Family Foundation named journalist Pat Sidley Health Writer of the Year. Literary editor Shaun de Waal (left) was runner-up in the Leserskring/Leisure […]

South Africa has 11 official languages, but we need a new language to capture the soul of the new Constitution, writes Etienne MureinikResponding to the just published working draft of the final Constitution, Bafana Khumalo regrets the lack of “phrases that roll easily off the tongue of a voice artist” (Mail & Guardian, December 1, […]

Wits could take a leaf from UCT’s book on managing transformation, writes Philippa THE embattled vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand must be glancing enviously from his turbulent empire to that picture of tranquillity nestling in Table Mountain’s aprons — the University of Cape Town. As Wits struggles to contain the crisis around accusations […]

Vuyo Mvoko THIS week’s two-hour work stoppages, pickets and blockades at parastatals marked for privatisation — though weak in impact — portend a difficult relationship ahead for labour and the ANC-led government. For organised labour the events “marked the beginning of a process of mobilisation against privatisation”, a policy the Congress of South African Trade […]

Marion Edmunds looks at how the political parties survived the year and the local This year has proved South African voters prefer the devils they know. Society may be in the throes of social change, but the electorate has hung on doggedly to the politicians it elected on April 27 1994. The local government elections […]

Anton Harber reviews the progress of the new South Africa now that it has grown from babyhood to become a toddler Six hundred days is not an awfully long time. A baby of that age — 20 months — might just be starting to use simple words, and would only recently have started to walk. […]

This year, the greens have incurred the wrath of rural communities who put economic development above environmental conservation, writes Eddie Koch IT has become a truism to say that struggles to protect the environment have, in recent times, created some of the rainbows that now cross class and racial divisions in South Africa’s social landscape. […]

Dear Nelson, I write to you in a great hurry and with much regret to tell of a terrible misfortune. Returning home recently from the Push-a- Bottletop Challenge Cup for Veterans at the Orlando community hall, I happened to see the postman struggling to push what appeared to be several envelopes into a drain pipe. […]

Cabinet members are assessed only on their performance in government — not on their party leadership or conduct outside Parliament (ie barging into live TV studios is not taken into account). They are rated on a scale of one to 10. Ten means they should have the job for life; one means they should be […]

The planned boycott of Shell filling stations didn’t have much effect, but activists are still hopeful of getting support for their campaign, writes Rehana Rossouw SHELL South Africa has emerged from this week’s two-day boycott of its 850 filling stations as an untouchable company — not the first time a call for action against Shell […]

Mail &Guardian Reporter KWAZULU-NATAL attorney general Tim McNally has two targets in his sights at the moment: Magnus Malan and other generals acussed of “hit squad” activity; and the Mail & Guardian, accused of defamation. McNally this week served summons on the M&G, claiming R250 000. This arises from articles published in the M&G on […]

In his profiles of the new South African elite, Mark Gevisser has found that race is still at the core of our national identity William Makgoba and Charles van Onselen. Looking through my profiles of the year, I was struck, over and over again, by their confrontation. Not simply because they are the prime antagonists […]

‘ The Russian Federation does not need a sharp political turn … You must not turn the wheel sharply on a big ship. Nothing good came from the fact that the country turned sharply to the right. ‘ — Russian Federation Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, as his party led the poll ‘ No, and […]

1 Which Constitutional Court judge has not served in the court since taking office in 2 Whom did air charter company Foster-Webb sue for R50 000 in November over the non-payment of a two-year-old bill? 3 At which South African university was a lecture interrupted by a student falling through the ceiling? 4 To which […]