Staff Reporter

A MALAWIAN musician, arrested and questioned by police at the weekend, died in hospital on Tuesday in what his family says are suspicious circumstances. The 32-year-old dreadlocked reggae musician, known by his stage name Evison Matafale, was arrested by police in Blantyre Saturday and taken for questioning in Lilongwe, over 300 kilometres away. His arrest […]

Bongani Majola “Condoms! Condoms!” shouts Vusi Fahla (28) as he distributes condoms to the passing taxis. Words such as HIV/Aids, condoms and AZT are an inseparable part of his life. He is the project manager for Friends for Life, an NGO that provides life skills to HIV-infected people, home-based care for patients and pre-test, post-test […]

Shyaka Kanuma hits the nail exactly on the head but a few more strokes would have completed the picture (“Look no further than taxis”, November 23). By using taxi passengers’ submission to the whims of the driver as a reflection of Africa’s submission to the whims of tyrants, Kanuma could not have used a better […]

Thabo Mohlala Although there is no cure for Aids yet, many people who are HIV positive advise that speaking out and accepting one’s status is in itself a prophylaxis. It not only has a therapeutic effect so the theory goes but also prepares one to deal with emotional stress and stigma. More significantly, it enables […]

PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday President Thabo Mbeki’s ministerial committee that oversaw the Government’s 66-billion arms acquisition intervened to set conditions for the arms investigation after Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota initially gave investigators carte blanche. The Mail & Guardian reported earlier that the executive invoked sections of the apartheid-era Special Defence Account Act to […]

Jack Schofield The Tablet PC was the highlight of the Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas for the second year running and it could be another year before anyone can buy one. Last year Microsoft chairman Bill Gates showed a “concept” version of the device. This year he showed a range of prototypes from […]

drink Shannon Sherry The myth and mystique that imbues the marketing of Scotch whisky is almost as heady as the “water of life” itself. The makers of Scotch sell more than just a drink: with the “liquid gold” consumers get drunk on an entire body of Scottish legend. At a highly enjoyable whisky banquet put […]

Frances Kinghorn The commemoration of International Day of Disabled Persons this year will be bitter-sweet when the Disabled People of South Africa (DPSA) present a memorandum on disability grants to Deputy President Jacob Zuma in Port Elizabeth on Monday. The memorandum is expected to express concern over government expenditure on social grants for people with […]

OVER 140 inmates die in Ugandan prisons every year due to poor conditions, a situation aggravated by the country’s HIV/Aids epidemic, a prisons official said on Thursday. Prison representative Mary Kaddu told reporters at a conference on conditions in African prisons, including human rights, that a report compiled by the prison department showed that over […]

Thebe Mabanga Paris is the world’s sexiest city, depressingly few people worry about catching HIV, and Americans claim to be the most rampant nation. People prefer to have sex on the beach (a possible explanation for the popularity of the cocktail with the same name), the back seat of the car loses out to the […]

Accidents of birth rob the World Cup of many of the world’s very best players Ian Ridley World governing body Fifa must have been cold-sweating in Switzerland but in the end it turned out nice again: all seven of the previous World Cup winners through to the finals after convincing last-gasp wins. Once the relief […]

David Hopps in Jaipur England’s tour of India looked in real danger of cancellation after Jagmohan Dalmiya, president of the Indian cricket board, angrily refused to recognise the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) deadline of noon on Friday, Calcutta time, for confirmation that India’s suspended batsman Virender Sehwag will not play in next week’s first Test […]

Jo Nel Anatomy of dark: collected poems of arthur nortje edited by Dirk Klopper (Unisa) In 1972, exiled South African critic Lewis Nkosi wrote in The Will to Die: “Time, frustration and despair, with their attendant drugs alcohol and suicide are taking a toll on South African writers. Nat Nakasa. Ingrid Jonker. Now Can Themba […]

Barry Streek The government has scrapped plans to impose a levy on the advertising industry to finance the proposed Media Development and Diversity Agency, which will now be funded by the media industry and government. The print and broadcast media have agreed to provide one-third of the agency’s five-year budget of R256-million R85-million over five […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter Dingaan Thobela will be trying to turn back the clock when he steps into the ring at the Molson centre in Montreal on Friday night. He takes on hometown boy Eric “Lucky Luke” Lucas for the World Boxing Council (WBC) super-middleweight world title. If successful, it will be the Rose of Soweto’s […]

Constitutional Court president Arthur Chaskalson, South Africa’s new Chief Justice, spoke to Mungo Soggot this week Mail & Guardian: What do you see as your main challenges now that you will be presiding over the entire judicial system as opposed to just the Constitutional Court? Arthur Chaskalson: I don’t think it’s a question of presiding […]

Johannesburg | Wednesday CANADA’S International Development Research Centre (IDRC) announced that its Acacia Program in Southern Africa will now be hosted by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). A signing ceremony is taking place today at the Bank’s Headquarters in Midrand, South Africa. The programme aims to empower sub-Saharan communities with the ability to […]

Mombassa | Thursday AFRICA is losing two million hectares of forest every five years, making the continent move closer to becoming one huge desert, conservation experts warned here on Wednesday. “This translates to 22% of the nine million hectares lost globally in a single year, with a third of the remaining forest area under threat […]

AMINU ABUBAKAR, Kano | Thursday THE embattled government of northern Nigeria’s most populous state admitted on Wednesday the scale of a cholera epidemic that has left more than 700 dead and hospitalised thousands. After weeks of denying the seriousness of the outbreak, which began in October and spread like wildfire through the narrow streets of […]

Johannesburg | Sunday SOUTH African police are probing the use of money sent to Afghanistan by aid agencies, amid speculation that it may be ending up in the hands of fighters. Some R20-million ($two-million) have flowed to Afghanistan from South Africa, where it was collected by several relief agencies, police told the Sunday Independent newspaper. […]

Washington | Thursday A US House of Representatives committee on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation designed to pressure Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his government to restore democratic rule. The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act approved by the House International Relations Committee, directs President George W Bush’s administration to support the people of Zimbabwe in […]

THE Nigerian central labour movement on Tuesday insisted on the implementation of an agreed 25% wage increase for public sector workers from next year. Following a slight increase in the price of fuel at the pumps, the Nigerian government and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had in June last year agreed that workers’ salaries be […]

Cape Town | Wednesday SOUTH Africa’s apartheid-era New National Party (NNP) and the ruling African National Congress on Tuesday unveiled a new deal which would see the two former foes work together on provincial and national levels. In a joint statement, the two parties said the power-sharing arrangement in the Western Cape province would allow […]

Harare | Wednesday TWO Zimbabwe opposition members told a court in the country’s second city of Bulawayo that they were tortured to confess to the murder of a ruling party stalwart, press reports said on Wednesday. War veteran leader Cain Nkala was abducted from his Bulawayo home in early November by unknown gunmen. His body […]

Paris | Wednesday THE Belgian brewing giant Interbrew declined comment on Wednesday on a report it has prepared a 6,4-billion-euro bid for rival South African Breweries (SAB) to create a global giant drink group, but promised a statement later as SAB shares surged. Interbrew was ready to offer more than four billion pounds (6,4-billion euros, […]

The Belgian brewing giant Interbrew is preparing an offer for rival South African Breweries of more than four billion pounds (6.4 billion euros, 5.7 billion dollars), the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. – AFP

THE IMF and the World Bank have agreed to provide Tanzania with a total three billion dollars in debt relief under an initiative for the world’s most indebted nations, the two organizations announced on Tuesday. Tanzania is the fourth to qualify for debt reduction under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Heavily Indebted Poor […]

EGYPTIAN police rounded up members of a Cairo-based Pakistani-Egyptian ring, supplying fake European Union entry visas to Pakistanis. A source at the airport said that the visas, using forged stamps from European embassies in Islamabad, were sold for $5 000 each. The gang was broken up after investigators, who received a tip-off from an unspecified […]

Johannesburg | Tuesday PRESS freedom has come under attack in virtually every region of the world this year, with an alarming number of journalists killed or imprisoned, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) said on Monday. The Paris-based organisation said in a statement that 56 journalists have been killed worldwide this year — 41 of […]

EGYPTIAN police have arrested the son of a poet and playwright who posted his father’s unpublished and allegedly obscene magnum opus on the web, his lawyer said on Sunday. Shohdy Naguib was arrested Thursday night on charges of “distributing immoral materials” for having published his father’s poem on a server outside of Egypt. The prosecutor […]

OLA AWONIYI, Abuja | Tuesday NIGERIA’S privatisation agency scrambled on Monday to rescue a $1,3-billion dollar sale of a controlling stake in the state-run telecoms agency after last minute hitches stopped the deal. On Thursday, Vice President Atiku Abubakar was scheduled to preside over the signing of documents between the government and an international consortium, […]