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 […]
THE Judicial Services Commission is slowly dragging our stuffy Bench into the modern era, announcing that public hearings will be held to assess nominees for some of the positions on the new Constitutional Court. This is a significant step towards breaking down the antediluvian notion that judges are somehow above public scrutiny, criticism and accountability […]
Philippa Garson THE plight of prisoners with HIV will be brought to the fore when an application is lodged by the Aids Law Project on their behalf. The application, to be heard in the Rand Supreme Court soon, will attempt to prevent these prisoners from being abused and stripped of their rights. It will also […]
GOLF: Jon Swift THERE is something very refreshing in this harsh and materialistic world about the way Ernie Els approaches the business of professional golf. Evidences of this is his wavering about taking up the 10-year exemption his historic win in the US Open earned him earlier this year. In this apparent indecision, Els has […]
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. […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift WITH the emphasis so firmly on the trials and tribulations of the South African team in New Zealand, there is cause for a pause and a thought on the future of the Lion Cup which reaches semi-final stage this weekend. The national side will continue to play tests both home and away […]
Reg Rumney reports on a small business initiative that works AN innovative method of distributing products in the townships is paying off for the mini-entrepreneurs it is designed to help. It is the brainchild of Sam Alexander, ex of Liberty Life, who set up the Strive Foundation some years ago to train such entrepreneurs and […]
Pompous officials and dirt in Mike Atherton’s pocket couldn’t ruin South Africa’s triumphant return to Lord’s CRICKET: Luke Alfred ALLEGED ball-tampering by the England captain Mike Atherton late last Saturday afternoon briefly threatened to overshadow South Africa’s first Test match at Lord’s for 29 years. Several other incidents, such as the old South African flag […]
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 […]
NATIVE TONGUE Bafana Khumalo I AM walking down the street, hand in hand with my dearly beloved, gingerly stepping over the brownish water from the burst sewerage pipe. The water is coursing down in-between the matchbox houses to rest in little potholes, whereupon it collects into pungent dams in the middle of the street. It’s […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
After being runner-up in the Open twice, Nick Price finally got his hands on the Claret Jug last weekend GOLF: Paul Martin THOUGH it’s flown trans-Atlantically with him, Nick Price still hardly ever puts his Claret Jug down. It overflowed with champagne on Sunday evening, causing a champion’s hangover, but on Monday after a three-hour […]
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 […]
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 […]
Weekly Mail Reporter THE ANC’s Johannesburg headquarters, Shell House, is pervaded by disillusionment and insecurity as hundreds of staff members wait for cutbacks in the organisation’s operations. This is despite assurances from their leadership that the organisation will look after its employees. The scaling down of the ANC’s headquarters after its election victory has been […]
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 […]
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 […]
Weekly Mail Reporter THE police file on Mail & Guardian co-editor Anton Harber — the first such security file from the 1980s to be released — consists of three scanty A4 pages of a computer printout, filled with errors. If the file is anything to go on, the police knew almost nothing about Harber; what […]
The new health minister launches a massive Aids programme to deal with the looming crisis. Mark Gevisser reports AFTER years of official foot-dragging and negligence, the government has finally endorsed an Aids programme that could see as much as R256-million allocated to Aids prevention and care in the next two years. In the most important […]
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 […]
Dutch bassist Eric van der Westen keeps forging links with South African jazz. Now local musos can sample his technique at a series of workshops. Gwen Ansell reports `LAST time I left South Africa,” reflects Dutch jazz bassist Eric van der Westen over a heaped plate of Yeoville’s best bacon and eggs, “it took me […]
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 […]
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 […]
Both managements and unions will have to adapt to deal with the rising tide of worker militancy, writes Drew Forrest IT somehow seemed out of place in the brave new South Africa — a white manager of Pick ‘n Pay’s Southgate store held hostage by black strikers in his office, a sharpened broomstick at his […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
THEATRE: Guy Willoughby ANGELS are definitely making a comeback. Ever since Wim Wenders’ achingly lyrical movie Wings of Desire (1987), the prospect of lovely and innocent beings at work in a fallen world has taken imaginative hold. This is perhaps a signal that, in the West, the world is regarded as so irretrievably rotten that […]
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 […]
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 […]