Staff Reporter

Joseph Hanlon The fallout from the murder of a corruption-busting Mozambican banker may complicate South African banking giant Absa’s bid to buy the bank the murdered man headed. Banco Austral’s interim president, Antnio Siba-Siba Macucua, was thrown down a 15-storey stairwell at the bank’s Maputo headquarters on August 11, two days before Absa was to […]

CRICKET Peter Robinson The point about arrogance is that it usually helps to have something to be arrogant about. Shaun Pollock’s South Africans were accused of arrogance on the grounds that they spurned the opportunity to warm up in Harare, arriving in Zimbabwe just two days before the first Test, but it took them less […]

Richard Norton-Taylor and Jon Henley in Paris The CIA, the FBI and the United States’s national security agency spend billions of dollars a year gathering intelligence abroad and combating terrorism at home significantly more than any other country. Their satellites can spot vehicle number plates and eavesdrop on millions of e-mails and telephone calls, yet […]

Tusi Fokane broadcasting and the national question by Jane Duncan Broadcasting and the National Question is a well-articulated and carefully constructed argument that explores the socio-economic and political agenda of the media in contemporary South African society through a critique of the policies of neo-liberalism and the “constructed realities” of globalisation. Author, Jane Duncan, is […]

Paul Kirk A can of coke for R12,50. An 8km taxi ride for R200. These aren’t the prices one can expect in 2050, they were the prices charged and paid in Durban until last weekend. Within a day after the delegates attending the World Conference against Racism left Durban, prices crashed. During the conference a […]

Provided you use your head, you can save 20% on the book price of the car you want by buying at an auction Gavin Foster Buying a second-hand car can be a tricky business. Do you go to a dealer or look for a cheap private deal? What happens if you buy a lemon that’s […]

Mail & Guardian reporters New York City had received more than 11 000 body bags by Thursday, although the number of dead from the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon remains uncertain. The body bags were sent to hospitals in the city. They were carried by a convoy of tractor trailers […]

Barry Streek Financial disarray in the government’s secret services and secret funds, reminiscent of the apartheid era, has been uncovered by Auditor-General Shauket Fakie in two reports tabled in Parliament this week. The reports show the transfer of R51-million of secret funds to the police without the approval of Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, overspending […]

Jaspreet Kindra A security company is advertising the fact that it protects the South African president’s house. In a pamphlet that was distributed on Johannesburg streets this week, Chubb Armed Response/BBR Security states: “We protect the residence of our president and most corporate businesses in SA.” The pamphlet lists the fact that it provides security […]

REVIEW Gavin Foster Daihatsu YRV, R127 995 Funny little car, the Daihatsu YRV. It’s dinky. It’s fun. It’s quite lively. It’s very well equipped in some areas, with ABS and EBD, dual airbags, electric windows and an aircon as standard, but it falls down, rather unnecessarily, in others. Soundproofing could be better, the doors feel […]

analysis Larry Elliott It will be weeks, months, even years before the full economic effects of the disaster that befell New York and Washington can be assessed. But one thing is already certain: the impact will be colossal, not just on the United States but on the rest of the world. This was a shock […]

The former judge blunders on as he always has Comment Richard Calland Pricking the political mythology of contemporary South Africa is a precarious but nonetheless necessary pursuit. Take former Judge Willem Heath. Having conducted a persistent though ultimately self-corroding campaign to depict himself as the corruption-busting saviour of the new South Africa in the public […]

A South African athletics season that started badly improved in the last couple of weeks Martin Gillingham Anything’s possible at Athletics South Africa these days so it won’t come as any surprise if the powers-that-be in Houghton call a special meeting and declare that, from now on, the track and field calendar will start on […]

The president questions the link between HIV and Aids, yet he is no medical doctor, nor disease specialist. He relies on outdated statistics. He states that Aids is caused by poverty, yet his government wastes R48-billion on arms that South Africa does not need and will never use, unless involved in a conflict with the […]

The log section comes to an end this weekend Andy Capostagno The South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) has no plans to cancel the fixture between the Springboks and the United States Eagles in Houston, Texas, on December 1. Despite Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, Sarfu is pressing ahead with preparations for […]

Scientists have a keen interest in meteorites, saying they could hold information about other planets Nawaal Deane In most countries you can buy a meteorite for a few dollars on the Internet but in South Africa it is illegal to keep one of these terrestrial rocks even if you find it in your backyard. This […]

channel vision Robert Kirby Unwittingly, last week’s Special Assignment produced a true classic: a documentary about the mysterious deaths, some months ago, of jackass penguins and a brace of pelicans at the East London aquarium. Headlined The Penguin Murders, I thought I’d strayed into some absurdist private-eye series. How do you even start to take […]

Jaspreet Kindra South African Communist Party members are planning to haul communist Cabinet members over the coals this weekend for defying the party line by supporting and implementing the state’s privatisation policy. There is a groundswell of protest from almost all provincial structures over the role of SACP central executive members and party officials including […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter New Jersey-based promoters Main Events will promote the World Boxing Council (WBC) super-middleweight title bout between Eric Lucas and Dingaan “Rose of Soweto” Thobela. Main Events, which represents the likes of Lennox Lewis, Zab Judah, Fernando Vargas and Michael Moorer, won the purse bid held last week in Mexico. The Lucas-Thobela bout […]

Drew Forrest (September 7) is on the money. The African National Congress prefers sycophantic enemies to critical friends. As a long-time apartheid opponent, I also increasingly find myself subject to hostility because I criticise the government in public. Many of those with whom the ANC prefers to deal are supporters of the old South Africa, […]

An entrepeneur plans to provide much-needed infrastructure for small fishing enterprises Barry Streek Costly and time-wasting experiences with larger companies in the fishing industry have provoked Cape Town entrepreneur Sam Montsi, whose company has had a quota for six years, to open a multifaceted service to serve small and medium fishing enteprises. Montsi’s partner, Francois […]

comment Hugo Young At its founding the United States never wanted to run the world. George Washington decreed that commerce not politics was what mattered, and Thomas Jefferson warned against the danger of “entangling alliances”. The treachery and slaughter endemic to the great powers, France and Britain, in their seven years’ war for European and […]

Analysis Iden Wetherell When Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe returned from Libya last weekend he was full of cheer that the Abuja agreement on Zimbabwe’s landreform programme had provided a welcome show of solidarity by African states. By Tuesday that optimism had evaporated as Mugabe had difficulty disguising his resentment of criticism from neighbours. While last […]

Two field rangers are still in a critical condition after being trapped in the fire that claimed the lives of 23 people Fiona Macleod The Kruger Park is looking into reports that disgruntled staff members started the run-away fire that killed 23 people and destroyed 60000ha of the world-famous reserve last week. The atmosphere among […]

comment Khadija Magardie I have it on the strictest authority from one of the interpreters accompanying the Latin American delegation to the World Conference against Racism that the following exchange actually took place. A poor woman from a remote tribe of indigenous people in Peru had just told an assembled panel a harrowing tale of […]

Mail & Guardian reporter To meet Harry Mentor is a delight. He is a small man with a large and irrepressible love and passion for the only thing he knows the sea. A product of his mother’s influence, with more than 40 years of being at sea, he is rock steady in his vision for […]

SOCCER Ntuthuko Maphumulo Africa’s contingent for next year’s World Cup in Korea and Japan has already been decided with South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tunisia to represent the continent but most other regions are still fighting it out to decide who will attend the showpiece. Europe and South America, the only two continents to […]

The FBI is struggling to reconstruct how the hijack operation was masterminded Duncan Campbell The four planes that were to change the way Americans live their lives set off within 12 minutes of each other from three different airports, all of which were on Wednesday examining their security procedures and wondering how four teams of […]

Victor Bondarenko is determined to win some silverware with the Birds this season Ntuthuko Maphumulo Is it a plane? Is it Superman? No, it’s the Dube birds. Moroka Swallows are flying high in the Premier Soccer League, sitting pretty in the top spot in the league. Moroka Swallows seem to have found their wings again […]

Marianne Merten Vito Palazzolo, the Cape-based alleged Mafia boss, has halted an investigation into his possible involvement in international money-laundering and won a stay of prosecution related to his illegal 1986 entry into South Africa. Two Cape High Court orders last Friday effectively stalled years of efforts by South African authorities to investigate the alleged […]

Barry Streek The former managing director of a major fishing company, Tony de Silva, and a Democratic Alliance MP, Antoinette Versfeld, have clocked up more than 7 000km since July 25 to help 16 fishing communities in the Western Cape to form companies to obtain fishing quotas. Versfeld says they have only worked with communities […]

Barry Streek meets the man in charge of changing the face of the fishing industry Horst Kleinschmidt, the head of South Africa’s Marine Coastal Management, faces a difficult challenge: he has the final say over which of the 6 000 to 9 000 applicants will be awarded the 1 200 valuable fishing quotas. Kleinschmidt is […]