Staff Reporter

Lapses in corporate governance at Umgeni Water have cast doubt on claims by Mike Muller, Director General of Water Affairs and Forestry, that the troubled utility is "back on track". Muller’s assurances were given in response to a <i>Mail & Guardian</i> disclosure.

We have just left the tar road behind us. Ahead lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the world’s most remote and unspoilt wildernesses. I have made this journey a number of times over the past decade. I promised my 12 year-old son and his friend that I would take them to visit the Bushmen.

Trouble seems to follow National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. The airport “bomb threat” incident is only the latest in a series of controversies over the oft-robust actions of the police chief. No sooner had Selebi been installed in 1999 than he was alleged to have called a sergeant a “chimpanzee” when the sergeant failed to […]

Rubashov was a veteran of revolutionary struggle. He found himself, however, accused of anti-revolutionary activity. Dedicated party cadre that he was, he protested his innocence. Under interrogation he came to the conclusion that he was indeed guilty.

The largest US feminist group on Monday slammed a Nigerian Islamic court ruling upholding a death-by-stoning conviction against a young woman for bearing a child out of wedlock and said it was asking Washington to intervene to get the decision reversed. A court in Funtua, 300 kilometres north of Abuja earlier on Monday threw out […]

The future of Zandile Jakavula, the CEO of Spoornet who last week was found guilty of impropriety involving a property deal, hangs in the balance after he challenged the parastatal’s sanctions against him.

A damning but contested new report on Umgeni Water –the giant KwaZulu-Natal utility that has struggled for nearly a decade under a burden of huge debt and poor management — has thrown a critical spotlight on Department of Water Affairs and Forestry Director General Mike Muller.

The Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) has started to dismantle its structures and downsize staff in the face of a bleak future for the sector as the terror campaign to force farmers off the land intensifies following President Robert Mugabe’s endorsement of the evictions on Monday, reports Augustine Mukaro.

That most sought after of South Africa’s struggle-veterans, Dr The Honourable Allan Boesak, Archimandrate and Moderator of The First Church of Christian Self-Enrichment, has applied for presidential pardon.

Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli’s decision to go for brawn in his tight five for Saturday’s crunch Vodacom Tri-Nations rugby clash against the New Zealand All Blacks could come back to haunt him. All the talk in the build up to the Test at Durban’s King’s Park Stadium has been about the physicality of the encounter […]

Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin recently claimed South Africa was on target to achieve about $14-billion in trade and investment linked to the arms deal. Billions of rands of exports claimed to offset the costs are made up of exports that would have left the country anyway.

In his efforts to expunge from himself all blame for the Democratic Party/New National Party divorce ("Is there love after Kortbroek", August 2), Tony Leon suffers a serious lapse of memory.

We was robbed. Well, OK, it was a long time ago. But collectively we, as a family, are still smarting as if it happened just the other day, and in broad daylight, at that.

Downed by, of all things, a Surrey heatstroke, I missed my flight home and spent an extra week chilling out in the same green Surrey. Out of touch with things South African, I spent some time watching television last week.

Unisa now needs to act fast if it is not further to insult, degrade and humiliate Professor Margaret Orr and all the women of SA. As the country celebrates Women’s Day, we reveal that Unisa has already been paying some of the legal costs in the sexual harassment and defamation case Orr has brought.

South Africa is the only country in the world that does not have a policy for the treatment of HIV/Aids. As such, millions are dying from a disease for which there is treatment. Consequently, SA’s government, medical profession and society are effectively part of a system that is committing genocide.

The peace deal signed this week between the presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda gives hope of an end to Africa’s biggest war, but implementation of the agreement faces profound obstacles. The deal was brokered by Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

During the 1980s the Kurdish and African National Congress leaders in exile frequently claimed a common cause and declared their solidarity. Since the 1990s these ties have become frayed, as the Kurdish struggle for political rights has intensified and the ANC-in-government has resumed economic and military links with Turkey, one of the nations charged with denying Kurdish human rights.

A week ago I was invited to give the opening address at the presentation of the Martienssen Prize, a prestigious award for art students at Wits University. These were the thoughts I shared with the artists, their teachers, and the audience.

A decidedly el-cheapo 12-page insert in a recent edition of the British Sunday newspaper <i>The Observer</i> was titled "SADC — Part Four". I haven’t had the privilege of seeing any of the first three of this series; this one was grisly enough.

Drop in infections: The number of young pregnant women infected with HIV in Zambia has dropped sharply, mainly due to awareness campaigns, said Health Minister Brian Chituwo. The incidence of HIV among pregnant women aged 15 to 28 has fallen from 28% in 1993 to 16%, Chituwo said.

NGOs can be sustained by mobilising funds from their communities, thereby reducing dependence on donor and foundation grants — if the Ashoka Citizen Base Initiative (CBI) is anything to go by. Ashoka presented five South African organisations with R250 000 in prize money.

My relationship with the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> dates back to my student days at the University of Zimbabwe. Then as now, I found the <i>M&G</i>’s editorial content intellectually challenging and refreshing to read. Nothing has occurred to materially change my high regard for the paper.

Durban businessman David Stock is taking on the United Cricket Board (UCB) to protect the rights of the small business he has built up over five years at the Kingsmead cricket ground.

Last Thursday the Minister of Sport and Recreation Ngconde Balfour named a ministerial task force charged with, among other things, looking into the United Cricket Board’s claims that the quota system was no longer necessary when picking teams at national and senior interprovincial levels. Less than 48 hours later, in Wellington, the South African rugby […]

Initiatives over access to information are set to place the government on the rack — in the courts and politically. The tussle over the monitoring and disclosure of arms exports continues when amendments to the National Conventional Arms Control Bill are debated by Parliament’s defence committee.

I appear to have sparked a rather serious cultural crisis in last week’s column by referring to the creator of Pinocchio, the puppet- who-became-a-boy, as Stromboli, rather than Gepetto.

‘Between me and the other world there is an unasked question; unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it: ‘How does it feel to be a problem?’

The 60 blind Liberians who were reported missing in May have been found following the recapture by Liberian government forces of Tubmanburg town in western Bomi County from rebel control, news organisations reported on Sunday. Shortly after the rebels were driven out, the agencies said, scores of malnourished civilians including 52 blind people emerged from […]

Fifty years ago on Tuesday a group of nationalist military officers seized power in Egypt, overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republican regime that lasts to the present day. A half-century and four presidents — all military officers — later, Egyptians still argue as to whether or not the so-called July Revolution was the first […]