Organisations caring for the elderly fear that data-sharing is taking place between Cash Paymaster Services and a loan company Paul Kirk An adviser to the government on pensioners has set up a company that offers loans to the aged at an interest rate that the Mail & Guardian has calculated to be more than 420% […]
Last week Robert Kirby presented the Mail & Guardian readership with an attack on Tony Leon’s integrity that was at once gruesome and florid, and altogether rather spectacular. But when one sets aside his searing metaphor, passion for hyperbole, surprising and often impressive tangles of description, it becomes clear that Kirby was really just talking […]
Pressure groups gathered in Durban for the NGO Forum that precedes the main conference Khadija Magardie One can always, legend has it, tell a NGO worker just look at the hair. Though the face of activism in all its forms has changed, and the typical activist is now as at home in a pair of […]
UP to 40 people were reported missing or dead on Wednesday after a river in northern Nigeria burst its banks, flooding dozens of villages. Manir Babba Dangundi, the council chairman of the affected Kumbotso area of Kano State, said 40 people were missing or dead. State government officials were unable to confirm any deaths but […]
Martin Gillingham was at a meeting where some extraordinary records were set The banner read: “EPO cheats out.” A simple message and one that reflects sentiments shared by many fair-minded people in track and field. The young woman holding the banner in the stands at the world championships in Edmonton, as the Russian runner Olga […]
It’s back to the drawing board for labour, business and the government to come up with a strategy for economic growth Glenda Daniels The most significant political strike in the post-apartheid period is over but the government, labour and business appear no closer to a strategy that can repair broken relationships between them. Unions say […]
Paul Kirk Despite assurances to the contrary, one of the Big Brother contestants has not been cleared of all charges relating to his illegal possession of a machine gun and an unlicensed 9mm pistol. This week it emerged that Bradford Wood has a murky history having in the past been charged with several crimes including […]
A NUMBER of children were seriously wounded in the capital of breakaway Somaliland last week when police exchanged fire with a group of civilians accused of holding an illegal meeting, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday. Police reported one person killed and six wounded in the clashes in Hargeisa last Thursday. Unicef […]
Gregory Mthembu-Salter “Dull. A bit slow. Very slow” is how prominent independent Zambian politician Dipak Patel describes Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy’s (MMD) presidential candidate. Zambia is due to hold general elections in November, but until last week the MMD was without a candidate, after President Frederick Chiluba was forced to abandon […]
The younger Williams sister won the US Open two years ago but has since been eclipsed by Venus Stephen Bierley Two years ago, as the Manhattan traffic crawled across Queensboro bridge towards Queens home of the Mets and, for two weeks in late summer, the United States Open tennis championships New York drivers were confronted […]
John Naughton In principle, computing ought to be amenable to rationality. After all, programs are just encoded logic. Why then do arguments between computer folk about the relative merits of operating systems have the surface characteristics of religious wars? Umberto Eco once wrote an essay in which he argued that the IBM PC was a […]
Belinda Beresford A leading United States researcher on HIV/Aids has formally complained about “gross misrepresentation” in the coverage of his research in the African National Congress’s online magazine, ANC Today. Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, who is also one of the top HIV/Aids officials for the City of San Francisco, wrote a letter to ANC Today […]
THE International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is to begin testing two HIV vaccines in Uganda soon with the collaboration of the Ugandan government. Under the memorandum of understanding, the two signatories will begin trials for a vaccine which will prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes Aids. Under the agreement, IAVI will sponsor […]
When Johnny Reb was entered in a B division race over 1600m in June, there was almost universal consensus that he wouldn’t see out the distance. After all, his breeding (by Fast Gun, out of the Lancaster mare War Baby) seemed to be all about speed, he had sprinted well and, to top it all, […]
Barry Streek Countries in the developing world have to work together in international trade and in institutions to gain influence on issues such as globalisation. This is the view of Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin as published in the latest edition of New Agenda, published by the Institute for African Alternatives. “It is […]
Nawaal Deane Women and children are dying of poverty in the former Transkei. The children are dying of malnutrition related diseases and the women are victims of violence exacerbated by poverty. The former homeland of Transkei, one of the poorest regions in South Africa, has the highest mortality rate for women and children in the […]
Stefaans Brmmer, Mungo Soggot and Nawaal Deane Irvin Khoza’s close association with a self-proclaimed apartheid military agent during the liberation struggle is at odds with the soccer boss’s reputation as a staunch African National Congress cadre. The relationship between Khoza and Petrus Johannes Koekemoer, alias Peter Murray, pretty much exemplifies that darker part of the […]
POLICE in Tanzania’s northern region of Arusha this week burnt 120 tonnes of marijuana impounded recently, a senior official said on Thursday. “The exercise took place at a forest on the slopes of Mount Meru and it took three days to destroy all 120 tonnes,” said Placid Chaka, the Arusha regional police commander. Police also […]
Marianne Merten For the women of Silvertree Rugby Football Club in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats playing rugby is nothing new they have been at the game since 1954. Since the club’s inception in the historic District Six almost 50 years ago, women have played rugby at fundraising games. Today the mother of one […]
Richard Jago “Cry for help when there’s no here-Rafter …” wailed the Melbourne Age when the Australian’s rickety shoulder was apparently falling to bits. That sentiment is being even more keenly felt now as Pat Rafter, arguably the most popular man on the tennis tour, plays what may be his final grand slam. All year […]
The benefits of negotiation worm’s eye view Steven Friedman There is an “obvious” explanation of the stand on privatisation taken by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). It is agreed by the president and leader of the opposition, commentators, stockbrokers and business people. First, it is said or implied that Cosatu has no […]
crossfire Will Hutton Slavery is America’s incubus. It made racist hypocrites of the founding fathers who drafted a Constitution and Bill of Rights that proclaimed individual liberties for all as long as they were white, knowing exactly what they were doing. It disfigured American society for 250 years while it was practised, and for another […]
Charlene Smith Keith Bennett has a mild manner and a pleasant face many would call him charming. Yet last Wednesday a Roodepoort magistrate sentenced him to 18 years in jail. For more than 20 years he had beaten, raped, shot, stabbed and terrorised his former wife. On each of the many occasions he had been […]
Thebe Mabanga The 10th Arts Alive International Festival kicks off this weekend in Johannesburg to induce a frenzy that will leave Gauteng citizens reeling with a month long hangover. At the festival press launch in mid-July two of the many events unveiled as being aligned to the festival were the Joy of Jazz Festival this […]
David Shapshak It took 20 years for the computer processor to break the one-gigahertz barrier, but only a year to double that speed. This week Intel, the world’s largest manufacturer of the silicon-based processor that powers a major chunk of the planet’s computers, announced its latest chip: the Pentium 4 running at two gigahertz. But […]
Barry Streek The suspension of one of Parliament’s most senior officials, Lulu Matyolo, the Secretary of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), was lifted this week but her return to office has resulted in a written complaint to the Public Protector, Selby Baqwa. The complaint to Baqwa not only contains the allegations that relate to […]
When racism goes underground analysis Mark Heywood In the last turbulent years before the advent of democracy in South Africa, many lives were lost in urban areas of what was then the Transvaal and Natal. Supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party, armed by white racists of the ilk of Eugene de Kock, launched merciless attacks […]
We watch reality TV shows to see a narrative emerge from the daily flux One of the hallmarks of our post-modern age is its ability to recycle anything and everything. Heart of Darkness was a key modernist text about barbarism in colonial Africa; now it is the title of a computer game. And Big Brother […]
Cell on steroids gets even better David Shapshak While the tech world has been clamouring to produce the ultimate convergent device blending a cellphone and personal digital assistant (PDA), Nokia has been doing it for years. The 9000 series phones have distinctively featured a flip-open screen and miniature keyboard, and have gone from strength to […]
SWIMMING Frank Keating One of sport’s most intense and antique challenges is reaching its high-season fulfilment. It is an international sporting contest famed throughout the world and a more ancient one than any organised by soccer. It is older than cricket’s Ashes (established 1884) or tennis’s Wimbledon (1877). It remains unimpeachably amateur and has been […]
A BOGUS psychiatrist who apparently raped a mentally retarded woman was arrested when he returned to her house in Northern Province on Monday for another “house call”. Residents of Tshware village in Mankweng, near Pietersburg, lay in wait for the 23-year-old unemployed man after word got out that he had raped the 26-year-old woman on […]
A NORTHERN Province school principal has pleaded guilty in the Calcutta Magistrate’s Court to raping a 13-year-old pupil on his office floor. Deck Mabudze (42) who heads Harvest Rock Combined School in Kildare trust in Calcutta, Bushbuckridge, was remanded in custody on Monday and the case was postponed to September 18 for judgement and sentencing. […]