Staff Reporter

… From pantos to Boney M. Thebe Mabanga on what we can look forward to this season Bad entertainment is as much a feature of the season to be merry as is long-distance travelling and expensive wine in celebrating the birth of a Jewish boy who changed society in only 33 years. In subtle form […]

Thabo Mohlala The National Intelligence Services and the South African national gliding team are involved in a row after the NIS cancelled a booking made by the team ahead of the world championships in Mafikeng in December. Team manager Quintin Maine says this threw their plans into disarray. He says as the host nation and […]

Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot Cell C was tight-lipped this week about its settlement with three businessmen who in a bizarre lawsuit accused the cellular operator’s Saudi owners of not paying them a $2-million”success fee” for helping to secure its licence. The settlement with Cell C’s owner, Saudi Oger, was struck with Alfred Oosthuizen, formerly […]

Soccer administrators must play the game Ntuthuko Maphumulo South Africa’s soccer fortunes will fall faster than the rand next year if South African Football Association (Safa) and Premier Soccer League (PSL) administrators do not act fast. The cracks are already showing within Safa over who signed the deal that gave all marketing rights of Bafana […]

Who is this Father Christmas guy, and how is it that he exerts such hypnotic power? asks John Matshikiza I don’t know where the whole thing started. But it would be discourteous, in this season of good cheer, to point fingers at any other member of the family. Suffice it to say that, somewhere between […]

We need to start listening to the world anew. Our survival may depend on it, writes Natasha Mostert Among the many grotesque edicts of Afghanistan’s Taliban mullahs, the ban on music ranked as one of the most incomprehensible. The idea that someone could be flogged for whistling a tune or clapping to a beat boggles […]

Pat Hopkins A nude reclines on a palm-fringed beach. Another plays the sax for leering men. A lap dance. A blow job. A village orgy. In each of these murals is a khuwana a beer-pot. The N1 the Great North Road from Cape to Cairo winds through the affluent eastern suburbs of Pretoria before straightening […]

WHAT was supposed to be an occasion to celebrate a marriage of a Harare couple suddenly turned into a funeral when the bride died on her wedding day, last Saturday, at Harare Hospital – a day after she gave birth through a Caesarean operation. Siboniso Zinyengere died as relatives and guests prepared to converge at […]

JOURNALIST Max Hamata of The Namibian newspaper was assaulted by the Special Field Force (SFF) of the Namibian police while he was trying to investigate an alleged drug bust at a Windhoek nightclub in the early hours of Thursday morning, December 13. Hamata said that he was informed about the drug bust when received a […]

Harare | Tuesday ZIMBABWE’S year-on-year inflation jumped to 103,8% in November, almost six percentage points above the 97,9% recorded in October, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Friday. The latest figure means prices in Zimbabwe have more than doubled between November 2000 and November 2001, and confirmed economists’ fears that inflation would reach 100% […]

THE Nigerian government on Wednesday approved 25,5-billion naira ($228-million) for the expansion of the National Assembly complex in Abuja. The expansion will involve the construction of hundreds of offices, rest rooms and car parks for parliamentarians, Information Minister Jerry Gana told reporters after a cabinet meeting. The construction, to be completed in 30 months, will […]

THE British firm International London Limited (ILL) has paid 10% of the $1,3-billion it bid for a majority stake in the Nigeria’s telecoms firm Nitel, officials said on Wednesday. “We received confirmation this morning from the New York branch of Standard Chartered Bank that ILL paid 10% of the bid yesterday (Tuesday),” said Bureau of […]

CLAIRE KEETON, Vlakplaas | Sunday SOME 600 South African traditional leaders, wearing animal skins and beating drums, gathered on national reconciliation day on Sunday for a healing ceremony at Vlakplaas, once the secret base of apartheid-era hit squads infamous for torture and executions. “I feel this place has now been transformed and belongs to the […]

Yakutsk | Monday THE Russian diamond monopoly Alrosa and South African giant De Beers signed a new, five-year cooperation accord on Monday only two weeks before their current agreement expires. The agreement, which will see Alrosa sell De Beers about S800-million worth of uncut diamonds a year, would help stabilise the world’s diamonds market, Russian […]

Q&A: PETERCOHEN Matthew Krouse Bright Blue is South African musics cutest success story, a band that has bridged form and time. Their lively jive sound, mixed with the rythms of mbaqanga, became popular on the early multiracial music circuit of the 1980s, a time of musical protest to apartheid, coming from even the most middle […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Khadija Magardie of the Mail & Guardian has won a human rights award for her reporting. The Human Rights Commission (HRC) honoured Magardie this week for her reporting on migrants, refugees and womens rights. Magardie was runner-up in the print media category for this years Duma Nokwe National Human Rights Awards […]

I would like to respond to “Not much of an American left left to speak of” (November 12). It’s an interesting analysis, but I think flawed and biased. Three points in particular struck a discordant note. 1. “But these constituencies are varied, diffuse, and often at odds.” There is a notion in the mainstream press […]

Jaspreet Kindra The Treatment Action Campaigns crusade for the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to people living with HIV/Aids is to serve as a model for a civic campaign for the expropriation of land from absentee landlords, and of unutilised or underutilised land. Frustrated with what they consider the governments inadequate land reform policies, the South […]

Glenda Daniels Peace between labour and business has replaced blood on the streets as ructions in amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) are finally over. The amendments are now with the National Council of Provinces and are expected to become law in February next year. The most fraught issues negotiating retrenchments, the right to […]

Richard Williams A one-two with his fellow striker, a burst through the defensive cover and a shot bent with the outside of his right foot into the bottom left-hand corner of the net. One-nil after 19 minutes. Still a long way to go, at least in any normal match. But on this occasion even the […]

Minorities don’t have the benefit of their interests officially being taken care of, writes Koos Malan When the Democratic Alliance was formed last year, some believed, rather optimistically, that South Africa was firmly on its way to a fully-fledged two-party system. This development was supposed to place South Africa in the company of the best […]

BODY LANGUAGE Shane Watson The January issues of the glossies go on sale soon, jostling for our attention with the usual cocktail of sex, glamour and celebrity. Vanity Fair has attempted to top last months Brad Pitt calendar-boy cover with a picture of a bare-chested Tom Cruise. GQs gone for Heidi Klum in a bikini […]

Sandile Ngidi The fledgling community radio movement was dealt a blow last month with the closure of the South African Community Radio Network (Sacrin). Sacrin was an initiative by the Congress of South African Trade Unions Centre for Democratic Communications, which was launched in 1997 to provide a satellite link-up platform for community radio stations […]

Africa would go a long way towards solving its problems if Africans acknowledged their role in causing the mess it is in, writes Shyaka Kanuma Will South Africa work now that political power is firmly in the hands of the black majority? This apparently impudent, patronising question has been asked a million times since 1994. […]

BARRY STREEK, Cape Town | Friday IN the wake of the row over the governments accountability to Parliament on the controversial R66-billion arms deal, the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), Gavin Woods, is considering resigning his Scopa position. The African National Congress says the seven parliamentary committees that considered the joint […]

Your coverage of Zimbabwean issues smacks of malice. A precedent is being set in Zimbabwe. Nowhere in the world has a white man been disposessed of his “property” like what is happening in Zimbabwe right now without compensation. After getting his stash on the back of initially slavery then colonialism and now neocolonialism, the white […]

Companies are stalling on repatriating their export earnings Mungo Soggot and David Macfarlane A leading South African economist, SG Securities Nico Czypionka, says South African companies listed offshore are maximising their returns by taking their cash flows offshore. Czypionka is referring to outflows to South African companies listed abroad, which, he says, “are a major […]

In his November 30 commentary (“The war in Afghanistan is a means to another end”) Firoz Osman makes outrageous claims concerning United States goals in the war on terrorism. According to Osman, the US attack on terrorism in Afghanistan is linked to oil in Central Asia rather than the brutal attacks on the US on […]

Khadija Magardie Ask some of the countrys top law firms what they are doing to “give back” to the community and most claim they already fulfil their civic duties. Last week Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) national director Vinodh Jaichand said local lawyers should use their expertise and take on more pro bono work. The […]

BELINDA BERESFORD, Johannesburg | Friday SOUTH African companies are missing out on lucrative returns by failing to see that money spent on HIV/Aids is an investment, rather than a cost, according to a new study into major Southern African companies. And while many managers may regard HIV as a personal issue, they are still failing […]

obituary Anton Harber David Astor popped into the offices of The Weekly Mail (now the Mail & Guardian) one Thursday morning in early 1986 as we were putting the finishing touches to that weeks edition of what was then a fledgling, penniless newspaper with a staff of five. Both parties were embarrassed: Irwin Manoim and […]

This follows the decision by an ANC majority to force through its response to the joint investigating team report and ignore the opposition parties call for a continuation of Scopas inquiry Barry Streek In the wake of the row over the governments accountability to Parliament on the controversial R66-billion arms deal, the chairperson of the […]