Staff Reporter

The painful process of resolving the Wits crisis has begun. Philippa Garson reports THE first painful steps towards healing the University of the Witwatersrand’s troubled psyche are being taken: the suspension of deputy vice-chancellor William Malegapuru Makgoba is likely to be lifted at today’s Council meeting. The protagonists — academics pitted against each other –are […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy The task team appointed by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki to look at the media will be reviewing the South African Communications Services (SACS) — government’s current communications model — in a bid to find new and more effective means of disseminating government information to the public. A brief for Friday’s meeting sent by […]

Inspector HT Moodley (50)joined the security police in Durban in early 1981. He was stationed at CR Swart Square. Although he had nothing to do with the planning, it was from here, at this security police office, where the assassination of Griffiths Mxenge was planned and executed. According to his service record in the police, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

South African psychiatry — so important to national healing — is in dire straits, argues Dr Zanele Sidzumo Baqwa ‘PLEASE, Mr Gunman, may I have my new shoes back,” said my 11-year-old daughter, Nosizwe Lise, to the hijacker speeding off in the hired minibus he had taken from us at gunpoint. This happened outside the […]

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, […]

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 […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter TWO KwaZulu-Natal massacres in a week — adding to the highest weekly “political” death toll in the province in six months — contrasts sharply with a strong national trend of decreased violence. Police said 10 armed men attacked a kraal at Mvutshini on KwaZulu-Natal’s South Coast on Tuesday night, killing an […]

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 […]

Etienne Mureinik, one of the 13 academics who accused Professor William Makgoba, draws some harsh lessons from the controversy of the year As the year draws to a close, it is perhaps time to step back from the detail of the Makgoba affair, and ask what larger lessons it can teach. Three stand out. The […]

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. […]

THIS has been a year of reconstruction, with damaged and divided urban areas getting the lion’s share of funding to implement projects designed by brilliant architects, planners and engineers — in Berlin, Beirut, Atlanta and Sarajevo, that is. Back home, things look pretty much the same as they did 12 months ago. Nevertheless, some practitioners […]

The indictment of the Malan 20 by Attorney General Tim McNally comes as a small victory to journalists who have fought for the expose of the Caprivi 200, write Mail & Guardian By 1995 many South Africans — force-fed over the years with a diet of reports about “third forces”, “covert operations” and “state-sponsored hit […]

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 […]

‘ 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 […]

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 For some, acknowledging the terrible deeds committed by the custodians of law and order in south Africa has been a painful process. To discover tax payers’ money had been secretly used to fund a civil war. And that the Christian Government had repeatedly lied when questions were asked both inside and […]

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. […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]