Staff Reporter

The Mail & Guardian, like other local newspapers, cannot consider itself to be exempt from public analysis, but it is the critical self-consciousness of the new South African state, writes Colin Paisley BRUCE COHEN certainly knows a lot about the problem of media control in this country. His article (Mail & Guardian, December 1 to […]

Chris McGreal THE world has got Nelson Mandela all wrong. You may think of him as the epitome of decency and statesmanship providing a beacon of hope on an unsettled continent. The truth is, he is a bumbling, sex-starved old fool secretly in the pay of the white man. Or, he simply does not know […]

Rowan Callaghan Two-year-old Fartoun plays innocently in the doorway of the cavernous room at Angelo hostel just outside Boksburg, indifferent to the omnipresent stench which fouls the air. Her family fled civil war in Somalia, but they feel abandoned in South Africa. The little girl’s mother has left home for the day to see if […]

Is education the growth market of the future, asks Karen Harverson Some 60 percent of the Midrand Campus Group, a privately-run learning centre specialising in undergraduate and postgraduate courses, has been bought by listed company, the Housewares Group in a deal worth more than R16-million. The group, through its mail order subsidiary Glomail, first became […]

Stand-up comedy is enjoying an international renaissance — and South Africans are getting in on the act, as DAVID LE PAGE MOST evenings at the moment, the Johannesburg Civic Theatre foyer is bustling with theatregoers missing a great opportunity: that of going to see — totally free of charge – — the Swopping Comics crowd […]

Mehlo Mvelase A VISIBLY angry King Goodwill Zwelithini for the first time blamed the Inkatha Freedom Party publicly for violence last weekend — after his brother, Prince Mbousi Zulu, had escaped a hail of bullets fired at his car. Zwelithini’s outburst, during a traditional ceremony in KwaZulu-Natal’s KwaNongoma last Saturday, marks a new low in […]

Chris McGreal The Rwanda war crimes tribunal has issued its first international arrest warrants for eight men accused of genocide and crimes against humanity during the organised extermination of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis last year. The chief prosecutor, South Africa’s Judge Richard Goldstone, declined to name the accused while their arrest is sought in […]

David Beresford tells the extraordinary story of how a young white South African couple, one a national sportsman, bombed the nuclear The inside story of how the African National Congress made a mockery of atomic security to pull off one of the most dramatic coups of the apartheid struggle — blowing up the Koeberg nuclear […]

Energy Africa Limited is Engen’s hope for future market improvements, reports Lynda After a lacklustre year, Engen has revived market interest with the decision to go ahead with plans to list its exploration and production business on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The new company, to be known as Energy Africa Limited, is expected to […]

Sharon Hammond and Hazel Friedman Four years after a high concentration of arsenic was first found in drinking water at Anglovaal’s New Consort gold mine in Barberton, Mpumalanga, the poison is alleged to have claimed its first victim. An investigation into the mine started recently after 2 000 residents were poisoned by drinking water in […]

The new Police Act may make provision for public participation, but the effectiveness of this community policing is questionable in a still white-dominated police force, argues Pule CURRENT debates and discussions around crime and policing in South Africa tend to focus on the inability of the newly-elected democratic government to curb crime and the incompetence […]

Zola Skweyiya, Minister for Public Services and Administration, in The Mark Gevisser Profile To drive into Transvaal House, where the behemoth Public Services Commission looms over its kingdom of Pretoria, you need to ascend a ramp and go through a security check next to a trash-filled dumpster. The pungent concoction of koptoe security guard and […]

Vuyo Mvoko Tension between labour and the government broke into the open this week, culminating in a wave of wildcat strikes that hit three parastatals up for privatisation — Autonet, South African Airways, and Telkom. The South African Railways and Harbour Workers’ Union (Sarhwu), which organised the nationwide strikes on Wednesday, warned: “If they (the […]

Two innovative ventures are set to improve the Gauteng public’s art literacy levels, reports HAZEL FRIEDMAN THE perfect instrument for assessing art literacy in Gauteng has, to date, been the microscope. And leading the “no-need-to-know” pack are past city councils whose role in cultural promotion has been so negligible — and misguided — as to […]

The dynamics of black participation in corporate South Africa are complex as has been revealed in the past year, writes Meshack As the past year saw political power shifting into largely black hands, 1995 saw gleams of what black economic empowerment may mean. The strident calls, the blinding euphoria and widespread upsurge of ventures covered […]

Vuyo Mvoko The Ministry of Education says it wants to avoid a collision with the Witwatersrand University Council for now, but threatened yesterday if the council did not heed proposals it had made on Wednesday, it would “act”. “It is not something we want to talk about now … but we have a responsibility to […]

After over-racing in previous years Martin Ndivheni is going for quality instead of quantity and hoping to achieve his Olympic Athletics: Julian Drew AN all-too-familiar story in South African athletics is the waste of talent brought about by over-racing in the pursuit of meagre earnings on the local road running circuit. The truth is that […]

The apartheid years have laden South Africa’s public service with civil servants who are unable to reform local government departments, writes Lynda Loxton NEARLY two years after South Africa’s April elections, many government departments are still struggling to rid themselves of the detritus of apartheid and emerge as sleek and efficient operations. The process, unfortunately, […]

_ght English ice The icy resolve of Mike Atherton and the English to avoid defeat needs to be combatted with the fire of unbridled enthusiasm the South Africans seem to have lost CRICKET:Jon Swift IT IS not stretching the imagination too far to believe that the greatest attributes of the game of cricket are drawn […]

Gaye Davis THE man in charge of compiling the document which will lay the basis for South Africa’s future foreign policy was in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ “image- building” section at a time when sanctions were beginning to bite hard. Dr Gerrit Olivier returned this month from his posting as South Africa’s […]

The Internet is the latest target of Richard OA Day in the Life’ Smolan, writes Annicia ON February 8 1996, more than 100 professional photojournalists from around the world will be working on a 24-hour project to find the pictures that tell the story of how the Internet has changed people’s lives. This is Rick […]

Ann Eveleth A COALITION of KwaZulu-Natal mental health and human rights organisations has warned that the start of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission next year could escalate rather than ease tension in the volatile province, unless the commission is adequately equipped to deal with the social aspects of the process. In a submission to Justice […]

RARELY in South African public life can a document have been produced which is as politically explosive as the 64-page indictment (including addenda) presented last Friday in the Magnus Malan case. What makes it paradoxical is that there are, as of yet, no political repercussions. The explanation, of course, is that it is an indictment […]

Last weekend’s National Choir Festival reflected waning interest in an important art form, writes VUYO MVOKO MOST South Africans, even those who claim to have the interests of the arts at heart, probably won’t bother to try and understand why the National Choir Festival at the Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg almost flopped last weekend. […]

Ann Eveleth THE shooting deaths of two political leaders in KwaZulu-Natal this week sparked a war of words between the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party, with each party accusing their opponent of the attacks and calling for stronger “self-defence” measures. The IFP said the murder on Monday of IFP Impendle constituency chair Mgudeleni […]

Lynda Loxton SOME analysts were somewhat sceptical this week about the much-publicised decision by the Rupert family empire to merge their tobacco interests in Rembrandt Group Limited (Remgro) and Swiss-based Richemont Securities AG. The merger will create a new, unlisted global tobacco giant, to be known as R&R Tobacco Holdings, which will incorporate Remgro’s tobacco […]

Rehana Rossouw DISTRICT surgeons in the Western Cape who still practise racism are to be rooted out of public service in terms of new proposals devised by provincial health authorities. MEC for health and welfare Ebrahim Rasool this week said district surgeons were one of the first “bugbears” he faced in office. He had been […]

In the final extract from his autobiography, Joe Slovo recalls the beginnings of the ‘people’s war’

Mehlo Mvelase MELCHIZEDEC ZAKHELE “MZ” KHUMALO — the alleged link man between Inkatha and the paramilitary unit at the centre of the Malan murder trial — has a long history of doing propaganda work for Pretoria. The Mail & Guardian has established that Khumalo — the Malan trial’s “accused number 7” and the alleged middleman […]

An amended tax act has removed certain lucrative tax benefits, reports Rowan A NUMBER of tax consulting firms have had to scrap a company car scheme which they marketed as part of their attractive executive employment packages, after amendments to the Income Tax Act. Gareth Beaver, a tax consultant at Ernst & Young explained the […]

Malan trial: Before the KwaMakhutha massacre, there was the Mpophomeni massacre. Both were connected to the SADF’s military support of Hazel Friedman THE murder of three union shop stewards on a lonely road near Mpophomeni on the night of December 5 1986 will be remembered as the beginning of the most violent period in this […]

BADMINTON: Julian Drew HE might not have had quite the same impact on his chosen sport as Paul Adams did when wreaking havoc on the English batsmen in Kimberley, but Michael Adams (no relation) is certainly making plenty of waves of his own in the badminton world. Adams is also 18-years- old and hails from […]