A blue train is slowly chugging around South Africa but Phelophepa is no ordinary train, reports Mapula Sibanda. It brings primary health-care to thousands of rural people AFTER the spectacles were placed on her face, the old woman blinked, then beamed with joy. Earlier she could not even see the letters on the board used […]
Combining movement with mime, music, narrative and design, the First Physical Theatre Company is forging a new theatrical language that decribes the complexities of interaction. Alex Dodd reports A YOUNG boy sits on top of a huge metal cage washing his hands in milk. Below, muzzled dancers compound his haunting ritual with their reeling and […]
Mac Maharaj has released secret NIS files to challenge those destroying information. But the files are surprisingly inaccurate, reports Anton Harber TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj has released three volumes of stolen National Intelligence secret files as a challenge to those who, he says, are destroying security information to hinder the work of the Truth Commission. […]
As MPs get ready to reconvene parliament next week, Ian Clayton analyses the tensions in the Government of National Unity THE fragile political unity in the Government of National Unity — with the ANC, the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party as unlikely bedfellows — is coming under strain as MPs and party members […]
GOOD sense has won out at CCV: we’ll be able to watch The Line in its entirety this weekend, despite Inkatha objections. But the battle over this mini-series — coupled with the furore over the status of Afrikaans on television — raises troubling questions for the SABC. How does South Africa’s public broadcaster balance the […]
Outrageous acts on the field and selection blunders off it have blighted the South African tour of New Zealand RUGBY: Barney Spender IT has hardly been the best of weeks for the South African touring team. In the space of just five days they have lost a test series to the All Blacks, seen a […]
MOVEABLE FEAST Marino Corazza I WAS not blessed with a sweet tooth. While others drool over birthday cakes, going gaga about upping their sugar levels, I’m thinking about moist biltong, won-ton and oysters. A fat slab of any kind of cake just leaves me cold — even more so when the munchers say: “Oooh, I […]
WRESTLING: Matlhodi Malope SOUTH Africa’s strongmen were thrashed on their home turf in last Saturday’s wrestling championship at the Sun City Superbowl, but the fans had a wonderful time. American wrestler Steve Austin succeeded in exposing one South African wrestler’s long-hidden identity after beating him in the 11th minute. Tornado II, who has been a […]
CRICKET: Paul Martin OLD Father Time, the most famous weather-cock in the world, swivels gently about the grandstand at Lord’s, the planet’s most famous cricket ground. The message for cricketers and spectators alike is that time catches up with us all, though judging from his still well-muscled physique, it has been kind to Michael John […]
Dealing with constant boiling point pressure to meet the publishing deadline, making crucial decisions about “which news” for “which pages” is a nightmare that most editors of newspapers and magazines encounter every day. The Mail & Guardian invaded their privacy to look into the secret passions that keep them sane and discovered that many long […]
The North Sea Jazz Festival is one of the biggest in Europe. Morabo Morojele was there IF your idea of the best way to enjoy a jazz festival is to decamp in a grassy spot with a good view of the stage, then the North Sea Jazz Festival might come as something of a disappointment. […]
The Mail & Guardian’s Stefaans Brummer visits the refugee camps along with the South African mercy mission A human tide, all carrying a load of precious firewood BENACO and its satellite refugee camps cover the fertile hills of Ngara in western Tanzania, a few hours’ walk from the Rwandan border. About 250 000 Rwandans, many […]
Jan Taljaard LIKE the Ancient Mariner forced to go on telling his tale with a burning heart, rightwinger and fort-occupier Commandant Willem RStte simply has to get his message out on the airwaves. The man who led the occupation of two forts and the defence of the now- silenced Radio Pretoria, has launched a guerrilla […]
Whites are still being prosecuted for refusing to attend camps, reports Stefaans Brummer SOUTH Africa’s new ministry of defence has come under fire for persisting with a whites-only call-up and prosecutions of those who fail to report for duty. While the Defence Act was amended last year to abolish white conscription and create a non-racial […]
Labour Minister Tito Mboweni is pushing for yet another commission of inquiry. Instead, he should support the existing National Manpower Commission, argues Martin Brassey DURING his keynote speech at last week’s Labour Law Conference, Tito Mboweni mooted a new commission of inquiry into labour legislation. “We need a Wiehahn Mark II”, was how he put […]
Restructuring a new education department has not yet begun, and the ‘old guard’ is still firmly in place, reports Philippa Garson THERE is growing alarm at the slow pace of change in the Ministry of Education, which is paralysed by a power vacuum and still in the grip of “old guard” apartheid era bureaucrats. While […]
IT could be any children’s home: that cloying nursery smell; the litter of toddler-paraphernalia; the baby-walkers clustered around a big-bosomed matron. But there’s one difference to the Salvation Army’s Bethesda Home in Soweto: all 14 of its infant occupants have been abandoned — because they have HIV. Adrian’s mother was raped — she abandoned him […]
THE MARKETS Jacques Magliolo THE Pick ‘n Pay strike has drawn a new kind of investor on to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In addition to the usual bulls, bears and stags we now find “anarchists”. These are traders who invest in the stock market “only when there is violence and strike action, which disrupts production […]
Farouk Chothia THE IFP last weekend adopted a new constitution that attempts to put into practice what it preaches: the devolution of power along federal lines. It is similiar to a constitution the IFP adopted in 1990 — and never implemented. Power remained firmly in the hands of president Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Large sections of the […]
Mail and Guardian reporter WHILE the number of organisations offering car allowances to employees continues to increase, changes to perks tax introduced last year have resulted in many employees preferring a company-provided vehicle. This was one of the most startling trends to emerge from leading human resource consultancy, FSA-Contact’s seventh annual car survey. Published in […]
The USA ran the spectacular well … but the final was a disappointment SOCCER: Ray Nxumalo WHAT an anti-climax the World Cup final, featuring Brazil and Italy, turned out to be! Both teams were too rigid and the game was a tight encounter with few flashes of brilliance. Which is why the matter was settled […]
Corruption, cover-ups and racism made rank and file kwaZulu Police force members go on strike, reports Farouk Chothia BEHIND the recent kwa-Zulu Police strike is the desire of ordinary policemen to break free from the Inkatha Freedom Party and promote their careers by being professional policemen in a cleaned-up force. At the centre of the […]
My Life is unlike any of Athol Fugard’s other plays. With this workshopped production, he told Mark Gevisser, he, like this country, has started again FIVE teenage girls on stage, filled with adolescent hope and naivety, play out a parable for racial reconciliation simply by telling their stories. What on earth is Athol Fugard up […]
Is the Market Theatre worth saving? The city council says yes – – but its grant this year was just over one percent of the amount given to the Civic. Ivor Powell reports THE Johannesburg City Council is spending over R22-m on theatre this year — but the country’s best-known theatre complex, the Market, is […]
Primal Scream’s ambient pop album was one of the most innovative recordings of the Nineties. Their latest is likely to be one of the most controversial, writes Fred de Vries FACT: Primal Scream’s Higher Than the Sun will go down in history as the most innovative, groundbreaking single of the Nineties. Here’s why. Musically, the […]
SOUTH AFRICA’S R2-million effort to help Rwandan refugees — seven Air Force flights carrying 136 tons of food and medicine — was but a drop in the ocean. It was not even enough to sustain for a single day the 250 000 destitute Rwandans at the Tanzanian border town of Ngara, where most of the […]
MOVEABLE FEAST Marino Corazza OUR hero throws a choice of shirts on the bed followed by a couple of pairs of trousers. Then come the jackets. He mixes and matches, crushed silk with extra light cashmere, linen with gabardine, Armani, Versace and Moschino, and Carvela croc shoes for that maximum understated effectiveness. On his way […]
Labour tenants are fighting back after a wave of evictions, reports Vuyo Mvoko MBULAWA Mavimbela faces a terrible dilemma — either he loses his home or all the wealth he has accumulated in his 55 years: 27 cows and 54 sheep. Mavimbela, a “farm boy” since birth, is a labour tenant in the Piet Retief […]
CINEMA: Fabius Burger AT a recent Hollywood party, Jodie Foster jumped on Mel Gibson’s back and rode him like a horse — apparently their way of showing that Maverick, their upcoming western, will be politically correct. Women, no longer loving wives frying corn fritters back at the homestead, now also brandish the whip. But two […]
THE Weekly Mail & Guardian has launched a campaign for the release of state information not only because we enjoy prodding cabinet ministers into action. It is to give substance to the ANC’s own policy of transparency, and to give meaning to the right to state information embedded in our Bill of Rights. Now it […]
Duet for One features the fine hand of director Malcolm Purkey, known better for theatre dealing with the political than with the personal. He spoke to Coenraad Visser OVER a glass of mineral water (pure, not flavoured), Malcolm Purkey talks about directing Tom Kempinski’s award-winning play Duet for One, opening next week at the Market […]
POLICE handling of the Pick ‘n Pay strike was true to classic South African police policy, “If in doubt, panic,” said a British academic specialist in criminal justice and member of the South African Police Services international training team. Mike Brogden also said the style of crowd dispersal used at Pick ‘n Pay stores indicated […]