Staff Reporter

IF apartheid has any beneficial heritage for the new society we are trying to create it is an abhorrence of social engineering. That is to say an abhorrence of those like Hendrik Verwoerd who — whether acting out of a sense of moral or intellectual superiority, or on private communications with the Almighty — attempt […]

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 […]

Hazel Friedman “ORWELLIAN state interference,” claims Helen Suzman’s new liberal foundation of draft legislation proposing tighter control of South Africa’s NGO-sector — but many of the organisations who would be affected say the red alert is mostly a red herring. Formed to promote liberal democratic values, the Helen Suzman Foundation — due to be launched […]

The attack on the Koeberg plant was carried out by the African National Congress’ “special operations” division, headed by the former South African Communist Party chief, Joe Slovo. The unit carried out the major ANC coups of the liberation struggle, including the attacks on Sasol. Wilkinson’s immediate commander was Rashid Ismail who is now a […]

Jazz: Meshack Mabogoane THERE are musicians who use sound as the basis for working their beings into living monuments to creativity and expression. The sounds they produce are more than musical, however consummate their accomplishment; they convey something — the very depths, even — of the person. Both musician and music serve as conduits for […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Simon Segal Leslie Boyd, new chairman of Business South Africa (BSA), is used to the trenches of business politics. It was he who played no small part in the merger between the then Association of Commerce (Assocom) and the Federated Chamber of Industries (FCI) to form the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob). Boyd, also […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

CINEMA: Justin Pearce THE unique charms of Zero Patience can be gleaned from a quick run through of this film’s musical numbers: a bluesy solo sung by a blonde, beehived HIV virus; a Victorian scientist, who has discovered the secret of eternal youth, delivering an ode to enlightenment values, called Let’s All Be Empiricists; a […]

Marion Edmunds THE Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation’s (BopBC) new highly paid chief executive, Cawe Mhlati, has been stung with accusations of reneging on agreements with the SABC after less than a week in the broadcaster’s hot SABC officials have criticised her for her conduct in meetings to discuss the future of public broadcasting in South Africa. […]

Gencor, has become a jewel in the mining industry, but can it smooth out its internal policy problems, asks Karen Harverson GENCOR’S transformation from an unwieldy conglomerate with a myriad of unrelated interests into an international mining group, focused on mining and metals, has been accomplished with aplomb. Through the foresight of Derek Keys, appointed […]

Simon Segal EVIDENCE is mounting that foreign investment in South Africa is picking up and could well be higher than popular perception has it. Information services group BusinessMap SA, the only known source to be developing a database that monitors foreign investment, calculates that since the elections last April some R8,5- billion has been committed […]

Strong medicine, negotiated by all stakeholders, has been prescribed to salvage the taxi industry, reports Karen Harverson THE embattled taxi industry may be on the road to recovery following the interim report of the National Taxi Task Team (NTTT) which was presented to Transport Minister Mac Maharaj The report’s recommendations — which could cost the […]

Shakespeare meets Frank N Furter in Fred Abrahamse’s sci-fi musical at the Baxter. MARC DEVENISH reports RETURN to the Forbidden Planet, the intergalactic funfair that has bounced on to the Baxter Theatre stage in Cape Town, has been performed in 16 countries, from London’s West End to Norway, Alaska and Australia. It has even been […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter ALTHOUGH the Comoros Islands have reopened for South African holiday-makers in the wake of Bob Denard’s abortive coup in October, the “Perfume Isles” are still being battered by other political storms. Political leaders on Moheli Island, one of the largest in the Comoros complex, last weekend announced they no longer recognise […]

Klaus von Lieres, ex-Wits attorney general and now KwaMakhutha trial defence counsel, in THE MARK GEVISSER PROFILE OI’M glad,” said one particularly laconic senior counsel after the opening of the Trial of the Generals in Durban last week, “to see that Klaus is feeling a little better.” The comment was a reference to the fact […]

HOME Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi came close to being arrested and charged with the KwaMakhutha murders, according to sources involved in the investigation. Buthelezi’s name appears several times in the documents that describe events leading to the formation of the Caprivi 200, the hit-squad unit whose members allegedly massacred 13 civilians in 1987. Most important […]

ROCK/POP: Chris Roper JOURNALISTS eager to gain space on the shelf allocated to “world music” have expended many words documenting the emergence of new “ethnic South African music”. But few seem to have noticed a metamorphosis taking place in a heretofore Eurocentric area of local music: the white male rock band. Yep, even these colonial […]

Philippa Garson THE crisis at Wits University around suspended deputy vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba has taken on national proportions as direct ministerial intervention becomes increasingly Yesterday Minister Sibusiso Bengu met with vice-chancellor Robert Charlton and other university stakeholders in an attempt to put the brakes on Wits’ rollercoaster ride into disaster. Political squabbles have now erupted […]

Western Cape Local Government MEC Peter Marais, whose boundary demarcation plan was rejected in court this week, is at the centre of a new election controversy, reports Rehana A NEW local government row is looming in the Western Cape over Local Government MEC Peter Marais’ refusal to prepare new legislation for rural local elections or […]

Justin Pearce ALEXANDRA’S Far East Bank squatters will soon be back in court, when Johannesburg’s Eastern Metropolitan Substructure tries, where the provincial government failed, to have the squatters evicted. Last week, after a blaze of publicity condemning the squatters as “land invaders”, Premier Tokyo Sexwale’s government failed in a supreme court application to have the […]

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 […]

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 […]