Jon Swift AT THE root of all the current upheaval and litigation=20 facing world rugby union is the insistence by the game’s=20 authorities that the game be an amateur sport. This=20 iconoclasm, this sticking to the ideals of a bygone era,=20 is rooted in the breakaway just on 100 years ago, when=20 some of the […]
Politician Thandi Modise talks frankly about being abused by her husband, to Stefaans Brummer SHE’s deputy head of the ANC Women’s League, MP and former Umkhonto weSizwe commander, yet Thandi Modise cannot make phone calls from home. For that she needs the permission of her husband, and he won’t give it to The SABC’s controversial […]
Johannesburg Child Welfare has permitted a gay couple to adopt a child — a first in South Africa, writes Gavin Duvenhage The first ever officially approved gay adoption took place in Johannesburg last month when a lesbian couple received a newborn baby from Johannesburg Child Welfare. Johannesburg Child Welfare, who managed the adoption, confirmed that […]
# Western Cape Bush Radio (89.5FM) Aimed at African and coloured people in the Cape Flats; languages are English, Afrikaans and Xhosa; on from 2 pm to 2am. Has a very strong developmental focus; 60 percent of its time is given to music and the remaining time is filled by news and talk shows. Most […]
Health care expert Paul Gross warns that Minister Nkosazana Zuma’s health insurance policy is fatally HEALTH Minister Nkosazana Zuma’s national health insurance system should have reassured those who expected draconian solutions to problems of access and financing in health care. But it remains flawed. I have looked at her committee of inquiry’s report, and judged […]
Mehlo Mvelase and Ann Eveleth A faction fight between two Inkatha Freedom Party- aligned groups from northern KwaZulu/Natal on Wednesday night led to the police shooting eight people dead in Durban’s KwaMashu township, said sources on the scene. Relatives of the deceased told the Mail & Guardian police had been “used” by one side of […]
Paleo-tourism is the new buzzword after the discovery of the significance of ‘Little Foot’, report David Beresford and Eddie Koch In an office tucked away in a corner of the University of the Witwatersrand, a professor who looks disconcertingly like Albert Einstein can be found dreaming of a new form of tourism — a grand […]
The Mail & Guardian is one of the very few newspapers in South Africa showing strong and steady growth. Sales for the country’s leading independent, quality paper in the last six months are up 7,7% over the previous six The release of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures is a time of hyperbole and obfuscation among […]
School feeding schemes in the Eastern Cape have collapsed due to fraud and mismanagement, report Pat Sidley and Rod Amner President Nelson Mandela’s flagship presidential project, the school feeding scheme, has ground to a halt in the Eastern Cape. Fraud and incompetence has consumed the province’s R114-million budget for the year in just four months. […]
Steuart Wright Public servants queue to place their bags on the conveyor-belt metal detector at Umtata’s Botha Sigcau government building. They wait patiently for the bags to emerge, unfazed by the fact there are no security personnel to check them anyway. It is part of the ritual of coming to work — in a building […]
Deputy Agriculture Minister Thoko Msane Boldly Thoko where no woman … When Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, Police Minister Sydney Mufamadi and Labour Minister Tito Mboweni were just beginning primary school. Thoko Msane, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and the youngest member of Mandela’s Cabinet, had just been conceived. There are […]
Pat Sidley IT’S not all bleak on the school-feeding front. Western Cape experts have piloted several projects they hope will nourish children, involve communities and assist the families of schoolchildren in nutrition education. The type of meal the province has settled for consists of a mealie-meal porridge with a sandwich and a soya- based flavoured […]
In a blatant breach of international public broadcasting ethics, the SABC is screening promotional material which pretends to be educational, reports Justin Pearce Thursday afternoon on CCV-TV. You’ve recently had a baby, so when you hear that toilet training is the subject of today’s A Guide to Health, you take notice. The programme starts with […]
Traditional doctors are coining it as the black business sector mushrooms, report Meshack Mabogoane and Eddie Koch The growth of black business in South Africa has reinforced another thriving economy — the informal sangoma and muti trade — as new entrepreneurs and executives resort to the supernatural for luck and to protect their cars, taxis, […]
Eddie Koch Farmers in the Potchefstroom district fear vast tracts of arable land in the North-West have been damaged by radioactive waste and contaminated ground water from neighbouring gold mines. The Council for Nuclear Safety (CNS) last month completed a R5-million clean-up operation aimed at removing tons of used pipes and machinery that had been […]
The United States is putting pressure on South Africa to break diplomatic ties with Cuba, reports Stefaans Brummer SOUTH Africa is fast becoming a proxy battlefield for American policy on Cuba — but Pretoria’s diplomats appeared this week to be resisting pressure to toe Uncle Sam’s line on Fidel Castro. Department of Foreign Affairs representative […]
Non-governmental organisations are more important now than before liberation, argues Paul van Zyl A FORTNIGHT ago, President Nelson Mandela signed into law the Bill which will establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A study of the process which led to the formation of the truth commission provides a fascinating insight into the functioning of the […]
South African mercenaries have turned the tide of the civil war in Sierra Leone, reports Edward O’Loughlin Sierra Leone’s military government has been on a roll in recent weeks, driving rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) back from the capital Freetown and recapturing the vital diamond mining region of Kono. The change in fortunes […]
Rehana Rossouw Africa’s last colony, the Sahrawi Republic (Western Sahara), is battling for support from the South African government which, it was hoping, could play an active role in its struggle for freedom from Moroccan colonisers — who are applying pressure on South Africa not to do so. South Africa is the only country in […]
Lawyers accuse KwaZulu/Natal Attorney General Tim McNally of wilfully avoiding uncovering the truth behind hit squad activities, reports Ann Eveleth A former security branch policeman eager to open his bag of dirty tricks is likely to go to jail on weapons charges instead; a policeman roams free three months after an inquest implicated him as […]
Gaye Davis GOVERNMENT employees who blow the whistle on corruption or maladministration will be protected from reprisals in terms of ground-breaking legislation currently being The proposed Open Democracy Act contains a “whistleblower” clause, protecting government employees who reveal wrongdoing. The draft legislation — currently in its 10th version — marks a complete break with the […]
THE report of the Arts and Culture Task Group (Actag) released this week raises, among many other questions, the issue of representation. The cultural organisations which exist in our society, almost without exception, still bear the imprint of the apartheid era. On one hand we have bodies like the Federasie vir Afrikaner Kultuur and the […]
What do you do when you discover your domestic worker=20 is HIV-positive? A Johannesburg doctor, who cannot be=20 named for professional reasons, came across two=20 startlingly different cases I am a doctor employed in one of the public hospitals=20 in Johannesburg. One of my duties is to consult with=20 patients in the hospitals’ so-called HIV […]
Simon Segal CNA-GALLO’S dominance of South Africa’s retail book industry will soon be challenged by two new players, one of which is opening the country’s largest book store at the end of October. The CNA-Gallo group, through its 302 CNA outlets and 10 Exclusive Books shops, accounts for some 75 percent of South Africa’s general […]
Shadley Nash Eastern Cape Muslims responding to a call to take up=20 arms against the rebel Serbs in Bosnia are being=20 trained in guerrilla warfare at a secret venue outside=20 Port Elizabeth. Sources have also confirmed that a training ground has=20 been established in Pietermaritzburg and another is=20 expected to be established in Cape Town. […]
Gaye Davis and Eddie Koch MARIUS SCHOON is to sue former spy Craig Williamson for=20 R1-million in damages arising from the 1984 parcel bomb=20 which killed his wife, Jeanette, and six-year-old=20 daughter Katryn in Angola in 1984. Williamson has said he wants to apply for amnesty=20 before the truth commission. In terms of the act, […]
The Western Cape has come out tops as South Africa’s most competitive province in a report issued this week on the competitiveness of the nine provinces by the Foundation for Research and Development (FRD). Gauteng ranked second, followed by KwaZulu/Natal, Free State, Eastern Transvaal, North-West, Eastern Cape, Northern Province and Northern Cape. The provinces were […]
A human rights foreign policy is a laudable ideal, but=20 it leads to a minefield of conflicting priorities,=20 writes Danny Titus ONE cannot but wholeheartedly support the Mail Guardian’s headline last week: “Let human rights lead=20 the way in SA foreign policy”. South Africa is moving towards adding the international=20 element of human rights to […]
An agreement by South Africa to store Iranian=20 crude oil has incensed environmental groups and human=20 rights advocates, reports Rehana Rossouw THE oil trade and oil money are probably the dirtiest=20 in the world, and South Africa was soiling its human=20 rights track record and possibly its environment by=20 agreeing to store Iranian oil, say […]
AS the Truth Commission comes into being, it is as well=20 to dispel some of the humbug surrounding it. There are those who argue that this commission will=20 discover that strange phenomenon called The Truth. Even=20 if we were naive enough to believe that truth was=20 something a group of wise people could find in […]
MARIKE DE KLERK won’t be lunching with President Nelson=20 Mandela on Friday — she wasn’t invited. Tienie Vorster=20 and Elize Botha will be there, alongside Adelaide Tambo=20 and Albertina Sisulu, at a lunch hosted by the=20 President for the wives of former South African prime=20 ministers, presidents and liberation movement leaders.=20 Amina Cachalia, who was […]
Pat Sidley IT’S midnight, you’re on the table at HF Verwoerd=20 hospital. You’ve been told that your life has been=20 severely limited by your ailing heart and lungs. In a shooting on the Ben Schoeman highway, a perfectly=20 good set of heart and lungs has become available — but=20 your surgeon cannot go ahead and […]