DIAMOND giant De Beers said on Thursday that sales of rough diamonds through its Diamond Trading Company slumped 255% in the first half of 2001 to $2,62-billion. The group blamed the slowdown in the global economy for sluggish demand for polished diamonds, particularly in the United States, which had a knock-on impact on rough diamond […]
Schumacher joins Ascari in Ferrari book of greats, writes Richard Williams Tradition was not the first thing on Michael Schumacher’s mind when he signed his contract with the Scuderia Ferrari back in 1996. In fact it was not on his mind at all. He professed to know little and seemed to care less about the […]
Barry Streek Nearly 4 000 movements of the Earth, scientifically labelled as “seismic events”, have happened in South Africa over the past six years, 630 of them last year. But the majority of them are small and insignificant. Although one of these events recently caused a house to collapse in Welkom, in the Free State, […]
Michelle Nel “Dire Straits. Coming soon to Cape Town,” proclaims an eye-catching poster. Beneath the words is a picture of cracked mud. Does it mean the internationally acclaimed band Dire Straits is coming to South Africa, perhaps to play at a dried-out waterhole? A second look reveals the tag line: “Save water. Save the Cape.” […]
The Arab and the Jew may never solve their problems, not because the problem is insoluble, but because they seem both to be terminally disabled by the disease of ideology, both religious and nationalist in character. Ideology makes impossible any objective debate. This is Laura Stovel’s point (“A debate long overdue”, August 17). Frog-marching these […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo The under-23 South African squad will be taking part in a four- nations tournament in Angola from August 25 to 28. The squad will be coached by Shakes Mashaba, who did well with the previous Amaglug-glug squad that went to the Olympics last year. Mashaba now has many of the previous national under-20 […]
DUMISANE LUBISI, Pietersburg | Friday NORTHERN Province has selected 23 impoverished youths who leave for Cuba on Monday to train as doctors for the next six years. The youths, who come from poor rural families, responded to a provincial health department advert in March that sought matriculants who wanted to study medicine. Over 1 000 […]
Community Projects Award Finalist: Built Environment Support Group’s Msunduzi Project Niki Moore The “little boxes” springing up in their thousands as part of the government’s low-cost housing masterplan are often a major headache for municipalities.?Services and maintenance are expensive and very often the residents can’t, or won’t, pay. When services break down, the rows of […]
Urban Renewal Award Finalist: Hout Bay River Development Michelle Nel Cape Town’s Hout Bay river is the last remaining river system linking Table Mountain to the sea that’s worth conserving as a resource of international significance. With this in mind, and against the backdrop of much abuse to both river and valley over the past […]
The Green Trust Award’s judges Mail & Guardian reporter The Green Trust Awards 2001 were judged by an independent panel of environmentalists. We would like to thank them for volunteering their time and expertise. Arend Hoogervorst runs his own environmental consultancy, Eagle Environmental, and specialises in assisting industry with environmental impact assessments and environmental management […]
Isn’t it strange… (1) When any African National Congress officials/parliamentarians/Cabinet ministers are accused of corruption, inaccurate or downright false statements, the inevitable response is that the complaint is unjustified and racist regardless of who makes the accusation? (2) We have the most advanced Constitution in the world, we are told, which makes us the envy […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota this week backtracked on his decision to appoint Seth Phalatse as the new chairperson of the Armscor, the state arms procurement company, and withdrew the appointment. His turnabout followed the Mail & Guardian report last week revealing how Phalatse had admitted to taking a $20?000 (about […]
Investing in the Environment: Corporate Award Finalist: Cathay Pacific Niki Moore Take a group of youngsters from the crowded Philippines or high-rise Hong Kong, dump them in the vast African bush for a few days, and sit back.?Some kind of spiritual awakening is bound to happen.?And it does. “I’m from Manila,” says a bespectacled student.?”I’m […]
Amanda Lane replies to Matthew Krouse’s accusation that the line-up of Another One Night Stand is too white It is with a heavy heart that I write this, for it is my belief that one’s actions speak one’s truth. However, in my capacity as creative director of Another One Night Stand, I have a duty […]
Congress Mahlangu A team of consultants will undertake a number of conservation and socio-economic assessments for the Greater Addo Elephant National Park to expand the park for its growing elephant population and to realise its conservation and development objectives. The survey results are intended to attract World Bank development funding. The project, divided into four […]
Alan Henry Giancarlo Fisichella will replace his compatriot Jarno Trulli in the Jordan-Honda team next season in a three-year deal designed to provide the British team with the continuity they require to improve competitiveness and establish themselves as a possible winning force. The 28-year-old Italian, who currently drives for the Benetton-Renault squad, decided to make […]
Mungo Soggot The government has reached the end of the road in a marathon legal effort to block a group of doctors in the Northern Province from opening a private hospital in Tzaneen. The judgement sets a precedent for what is likely to be a battle between the medical profession and the government. One of […]
Natural Resources Award Finalist: Ground Hornbill Reintroduction Project Hilton Hamann It took a former TV presenter from Winchester, England, to recognise that if nothing was done about South Africa’s ground hornbill population, these large birds wouldn’t be around much longer. Anne Turner came to this country on holiday in 1997 and decided to stay. She […]
Johannesburg | Thursday RESERVE Bank Governor Tito Mboweni has blamed PAC secretary-general Thami ka Plaatjie and the Zimbabwean government for the slump in the rand, SABC radio news reports. In an off-the-cuff comment at an African investment seminar in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, Mboweni said “the wheels had come off” in Zimbabwe. In a […]
ADDITIONAL police and prison cells have been made available to police during the World Conference Against Racism to deal with offenders who ignored the strict security rules in place for the conference at the end of the month. KwaZulu-Natal police representative Director Bala Naidoo said a special court has also been established by the Justice […]
A NORTHERN Province retiree known as the “transport man” because he earned extra money by collecting goods in his bakkie took his last trip on Monday. Two youths beat and stabbed 62-year-old Mkhatshana Mongolo to death in front of his 11-year-old grandson after hiring him to collect cement. His grandson ran to a nearby village […]
SOUTH African dignitaries lit an Olympic-style torch in Pretoria on Tuesday to symbolise their opposition to racism, as thousands of Muslims took to the streets of Cape Town to protest what they said was Israel’s continuing oppression of Palestinians. The two events came 10 days ahead of a UN-sponsored global conference on racism which will […]
Johannesburg | Thursday THE South African rand hit record lows against two major currencies on Wednesday, dashing hopes that the government might announce an interest rate cut next month. The besieged currency was trading at 12,26 to the pound sterling and 7,77 to the euro early on Wednesday. Late Tuesday, the rand recorded its lowest […]
SOUTH African rescue workers were elated after they towed a stranded whale out to sea on Sunday, but on Tuesday it beached itself again and died so they blew it up. The nine-metre long humpback whale first stranded itself off the southeastern city of Port Elizabeth in one metre of water for about six hours. […]
SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Pretoria | Thursday SOUTH Africa’s security forces and justice system prioritise crimes against farmers but ignore those against farm labourers, Human Rights Watch reported on Wednesday. The international organisation investigated the country’s volatile farming community last year and released a scathing 230-page report on Wednesday entitled “Unequal Protection: The State Response to Violent […]
Johannesburg | Wednesday THE Department of Health is claiming that it has not yet received court papers from Aids lobby groups, demanding that anti-HIV drugs be provided to all mothers at risk of transmitting HIV to their unborn infants. But the Treatment Action Campaign says that in fact, the court papers were served on the […]
Lusaka | Wednesday ZAMBIA police released an outspoken opposition politician and two journalists late on Tuesday after charging them with defaming President Frederick Chiluba, one of their defence lawyers said. The three surrendered themselves to the police on Tuesday morning after their arrest was ordered at the weekend following a newspaper article which claimed Chiluba […]
MAXIM KNIAZKOV, Washington | Wednesday THE US government came under fire on Tuesday over its stance during Rwanda’s 1994 mass killings following the release of declassified official documents showing Washington anticipated events now seen as among the most gruesome atrocities of the late 20th century. “The US response was literally running away from any responsibility,” […]
A JOINT team of experts from the Sudanese government, UN relief agencies and NGOs left on Tuesday for the central Sudan Sennar State, to assess the situation after days of heavy rains and storms. High waters of the Blue Nile have already inundated a number of villages in Sennar State, where 500 homes and numerous […]
EVARISTO CUMBANE, Maputo | Wednesday SENA Sugar Estates — abandoned by its owners, bombed by rebels, and threatened by raging floodwaters — is about to complete its transformation from ruin to a potent symbol of Mozambique’s post-war recovery. The sugar mill in the central town of Marromeu, flanked by the mighty Zambezi River and surrounded […]
THE Nigerian navy has rescued a ship stranded at sea with around 200 passengers aboard which was running out of food and water. The Nigerian-owned MV Mulolinja was rescued on Saturday in difficulties off the coast of Brass, a town in southern Bayelsa State, the newspaper The Punch reported. The ship has been re-supplied with […]
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday set a target date of 2005 for four US oil companies to start operation of a second liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Abuja. The four companies, ExxonMobil, Texaco Overseas Petroleum Company Unlimited, Chevron and Conoco Energy, undertook a feasibility study for the project earlier this year. In a […]