analysis Jayne Arnott and Helen Alexander On August 3 the Pretoria High Court declared section 20 (1) (a) of the Sexual Offences Act, which prohibits “unlawful carnal intercourse for reward”, unconstitutional. Although it still needs to be confirmed by the Constitutional Court, this ruling means that it will no longer be a crime to sell […]
CHRIS MCGREAL, Harare | Friday ZIMBABWE’S president, Robert Mugabe, is preparing to declare a state of emergency, and possibly martial law, in response to US legislation imposing sanctions on the country’s leaders because of political violence, according to a Harare newspaper. The report came amid a fresh wave of violence against white farmers and their […]
A cricketer’s body was exhumed this week to discover the true cause of death, writes Paul Kirk Tertius Bosch, fast bowler and dentist, died aged 33 from a disease that afflicts fewer than one person in 100 000 and kills just 2% of its victims. Now a series of irregularities and the preliminary results of […]
Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot Did two well-connected black empowerment firms fraudulently conspire to mislead MTN in a bid for shares? This counts among the dirtier claims that may surface when both companies go to court in an internecine battle over the cellphone company shares, said to be worth more than R200-million. The offices of […]
Arundhati Roy achieved worldwide success as a Booker Prize-winning novelist. But she has given up the glory trail to become India’s most prominent activist. She tells Madeleine Bunting why she now risks jail Arundhati Roy burst on to the Indian national stage from nowhere in 1997. A drop-out architecture student and one-time aerobics instructor, she […]
GLENDA DANIELS, Johannesburg | Friday Striking motor manufacturing workers are about to decide whether to accept intervention by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to reach agreement on a wage deadlock. About 21 000 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) motor manufacturing members went on strike on Monday and about 5 […]
South Africa have five Tests to get things right before they take on Australia Peter Robinson Whatever the claims of men such as Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara (not to mention wonderful bowlers like Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald and Shane Warne), it is difficult to dismiss the credentials of Steve Waugh as being simply the […]
Tara Turkington The African National Congress-controlled municipality in the Northern Cape town of De Aar failed to pay an overdue account to a law firm run by a Democratic Alliance leader in the province so the town was brought to a near standstill. The Emthanjeni municipality’s moveable assets from the traffic police’s car to the […]
ANC: Torn between two roles Does it makes sense for a party in power to continue to use the language of liberation, asks Ben Turok Many people find it anomalous that the African National Congress persists in calling itself a liberation movement when it is clearly a party in government. Some ANC leaders say it […]
MOVES led by the World Health Organisation for a global convention to cut smoking will increase poverty and strangle the economy, Malawian farm leaders were quoted as saying on Wednesday. They said that about 80% of the country’s 10 million people live in rural areas and are dependent on tobacco production. WHO is leading a […]
be crushed’ Jaspreet Kindra Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana likens the loss of workers as the restructuring of public enterprises takes place to the sacrifice of human life during the African National Congress’s struggle against apartheid. “I was just remarking that the Reconstruction and Development Programme implies rebuilding and destroying apartheid structures. There is going […]
Harrison Ndlovu In a bid to control public urinating in their neighbourhood, Hillbrow residents are imposing spot fines ranging between R10 and R50 for offenders Central Hillbrow, with its high liquor consumption and many dark alleyways, is worst affected and residents have taken it upon themselves to control the health hazard. On a wall on […]
While Numsa this week lowered its wage increase demand, motor industry employers have refused to budge Glenda Daniels Striking motor manufacturing workers are about to decide whether to accept intervention by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to reach agreement on a wage deadlock. About 21 000 National Union of Metalworkers of South […]
MAIL & GUARDIAN chief photographer Ruth Motau has been honoured for her work at an awards ceremony sponsored by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. This is the second year the SABC acknowledged women who have made a difference in the media and 28 women were honoured last Friday. Motau received the same award last year. […]
Cape Town | Wednesday NEW mortality statistics have shown that violence rivals Aids as a threat to South African society, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told a news conference on Wednesday. But her assertion, backing up President Thabo Mbeki, is at odds with UNAids figures which suggest that annual deaths due to Aids are nearly 10 […]
Some 272 000 people fled fighting between rebels and government forces in Angola from January to June this year, a UN report said on Tuesday. Displacement of civilians mostly peasant farmers occurred in 10 of the troubled southern African country’s 18 provinces, the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) […]
Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE Home Minister John Nkomo said this week that white farmers and not pro-government war veterans are behind the recent upsurge in violence in the countryside. “No war veterans have been causing any problems on the farms,” Nkomo said late on Wednesday. “It is true the farmers have been attacking properly and […]
Luanda | Thursday ANTI-personnel and anti-tank landmines killed 110 people and injured 140 others during June in six of Angola’s eighteen provinces, a UN report said on Wednesday. About 500 000 people are trapped in areas littered with landmines or where fighting continues to rage in the 26-year civil war, the report said. Estimates vary […]
THE cost of bread in Zimbabwe has more than doubled since January, after a seventh price hike in as many months, a consumer watchdog said on Tuesday. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said bread prices went up by 15% this week, but the domestic Ziana news agency reported a hike of between 7,5% and […]
MORE than 4 000 Internet users in Ethiopia are under threat from the spread of a “Code Red”-style computer virus, the government’s science and technology commission (STC) warned on Tuesday. An expert with the commission, quoted by Ethiopian news agency ENA, warned that Internet and e-mail users here should guard against the virus by taking […]
A PLAY scheduled for the Edinburgh Festival on the recommendation of the British army in Sierra Leone has been cancelled because the British government will not let the actors in the country, media reported on Tuesday. The play, “Kpundeh”, which attempts to predict what will happen when the killing stops in Sierra Leone, so impressed […]
THE Sudanese government army denied on Wednesday rebel claims that its units attacked oilfields and destroyed oil production installations at Higlieg town in southern Unity State, official media reported on Wednesday. Suna news agency and Omdurman Radio quoted army representative General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman dismissing as an “unfulfilled dream” a claim to that affect by […]
A 78-YEAR-old Egyptian music agent said on Tuesday he wanted a mention in the Guinness book of world records for having married 203 times. Mustafa Semeda, an agent for traditional Egyptian bands in Cairo, told journalists he first got married in 1947 and has since then been married to another 202 women, most of them […]
POLICE near Port Elizabeth were forced on Monday to blow up a stranded whale. “It was not pleasant, it was horrible to see but it was the humane thing to do,” said Wendy Kant, a research assistant at the Bayworld aquarium in the southeastern city of Port Elizabeth. “The police carried out a demolition-controlled explosion […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday HIGH telephone costs in South Africa have limited the growth of the local Internet industry, international survey company Nielsen NetRatings reported on Wednesday. Nielsen NetRatings said in a statement that an estimated 1,5-million South Africans now had home Internet access, but that users only spent an average of four hours […]
A NIGERIAN snake charmer, Umaru Daura, picked up a 100 000 naira ($900) reward in Kano on Tuesday after slaying a snake reputed to have killed 34 people. Daura walked into the state government headquarters in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, Tuesday afternoon with the corpse of a slim 1,5-metre long snake. The killer snake, […]
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki acknowledged in a television interview to be aired on Monday evening that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is not listening to him. Interviewer Tim Sebastian of the BBC’s “Hard Talk” told Mbeki: “He’s not listening is he?”, to which the president replied: “Well he hasn’t.” Mbeki has engaged in “quiet diplomacy” in a […]
MANNETJIE Ganaseb is probably the only person in Namibia who can claim to have been trapped underneath a wild, black rhino and lived to tell the tale. Ganaseb, the Manager of Save The Rhino (STR) Trust’s camel patrol team, was lucky to escape with his life after a close encounter with a black rhino cow […]
A 79-YEAR-OLD Northern Province farmer and his elderly wife have been briefly hospitalised after three armed men ambushed and beat them on Sunday night. The knife-wielding attackers reportedly lured Hermanus Johannes Oosthuizen out of his smallholding house near Pietersburg by taunting his dog at 10pm on Sunday night. “His 71-year old wife, Gerbrecht, heard his […]
SAKHILE MOKOENA Pietersburg | Thursday CIRCUMCISION schools should be regulated without “assassinating” African culture and customs, urged Pan Africanist Youth Congress (Payco) leader in the Northern Province, Matome Mashao, on Thursday. His call follows the cancellation of a provincial circumcision indaba, or meeting, that was to be held on Tuesday but was scuppered when traditional […]
A GROUP of armed men made off with a haul of cash, diamonds and precious metals from a Swissair freight container shortly after it was unloaded at Johannesburg airport in South Africa last week, the Swiss airline and a German newspaper report said on Monday. Between five and seven gunmen, according to witnesses, raided the […]
This year’s Oppikoppi Tuned festival, from August 9 to 12, is gearing up to be the biggest to date — thousands of music lovers are expected to descend on an unsuspecting Pretoria, writes Valentine Cascarino.