A wealthy European businessman has invested millions in a unique conservation project Fiona Macleod Paul van Vlissengen is one of the richest men in the world, but when he comes out to South Africa where he spends half his time at the moment he lives in a tent. Even for a Hollander, the winter winds […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The future of a thriving informal settlement in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, is uncertain as members of the African National Congress and the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) battle over control of the area. ANC and Sanco branches in Kanana, Sotho for “the land of milk and honey”, have been […]
Fiona Macleod Conservation officials have opened an inquiry into the sale of a tame silver-screen star called Dandylion to a “canned” hunting operation in the Free State. The lion was sold by wildlife dealer John Brooker, who came into the spotlight in early June when the Mail & Guardian exposed plans to hunt Baixinha, a […]
For how much longer will government indifference, petty political infighting and bureaucratic incompetence continue to blight millions of South African adults who cannot read or write their own names? And how does one calculate the personal and national costs of the country’s shockingly widespread illiteracy more than a third of adults? Minister of Education Kader […]
channel vision Robert Kirby Is there any hope for the standards of local television journalism when what is already appalling taste and insensitivity sinks to the level of the sewer? Last week e.tv news kicked off with a story about the savage attacks in a Gauteng men’s hostel with lingering, close-up shots of the bloodstained […]
Have a spare moment? Want the news that no one else has? Have a look at the Daily Mail & Guardian. Enter a discussion forum guaranteed to infuriate you. Pick up daily cartoons from Zapiro. Surf to Q South Africa’s first and leading gay website or The Teacher online. Or do your research using the […]
Marianne Merten “As we say in Islam, we are brothers and sisters. We must stand together. Don’t look down on someone who is sick, especially not this kind of sick,” says Fatimah January*. She is living with HIV. Her husband discovered his HIV-positive status years ago. Their child is also HIV-positive. “People must get over […]
The diversity of projects funded by the Arts & Culture Trust ranges from urban renewal to art therapy, multi-media and book illustration. We look at five successful concepts Ntuthuko Maphumulo In the past few years the Visual Arts and Crafts Academy (Vaca) has played an important role in helping young learners cope with their traumatic […]
EDUCATION minister Kader Asmal’s Working Group for the National Institute for Higher Education has called for submissions for a university to be established in Mpumalanga. The submissions should identify programmes and skills that need to be developed in the province, including the role that the existing education infrastructure such as colleges could play. Working Group […]
opera Barbara Ludman Andrew Botha’s take on Rigoletto is so lavish one could almost believe one was back in the bad old days. In the early 1980s Pact staged operas regularly at the Civic Theatre with glorious sets, fabulous costumes and unimpressive voices, except for foreign singers brought in to sing the leads. There are, […]
Congress Mahlangu Agrilink, a project aimed at increasing employment opportunities in agriculture, has raised R11,3-million to assist small farmers in acquiring skills that will enable them to compete with their more established counterparts in the commercial markets. The USAid-funded project was launched in October last year as a pilot in the Eastern Cape. Agrilink provides […]
Nedbank, in partnership with the Arts & Culture Trust and the Mail & Guardian, is proud to be associated with the 2001 Arts & Culture Trust Awards. As the initiator in the Arts & Culture Trust’s creation, Nedbank continues to play a fundamental role in supporting the trust and its various projects. >From a business […]
MPUMALANGA’S Attorney Council, which represents 433 mostly white attorneys in the province, agreed on Thursday to amend its constitution to make the body more representative. MAC spokeswoman Constanze van der Walt said the organisation signed a declaration of intent agreeing to constitutional changes and restructuring during discussions with the Mpumalanga chapters of the Black Lawyers […]
A local environmental project is teaching people in under-resourced areas how to make the most of what they have Barry Streek This week 22 Cape Town teachers went on a five-day permaculture process course at a Khayelitsha school as part of a pioneering new approach to incorporate environmental education in schools. The course, conducted by […]
schoolboy There are fears that a new virulent strain of the disease is circulating in South Africa Mail & Guardian reporter James Hale (16), a scholar at Pretoria Boys High, was packing to return to boarding school on Sunday when he developed a severe headache. His parents took him to Sunward Park Clinic in Boksburg […]
The 1981 Springbok tour divided New Zealanders. Twenty years later they are still licking their wounds, reports Grant Shimmin The man in Hamilton in 1999 should have given me a clue, but I suppose I glossed over it. After all, we had a cricket tour to cover. Thinking back, though, he must have been planning […]
MAIL & GUARDIAN REPORTER, Johannesburg | Friday SOUTH African husbands, partners or lovers would probably have loved to be a fly on the wall on the Park Hyatt hotel ballroom in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Tuesday night. The conversation over the foie gras and wine was positively scandalous. “Oh my God!” shrieked a woman standing near […]
Philip French Not all great movie meals are enticing banquets and one of the most famous of all is as nightmarish as it’s funny. It’s one of the four celebrated meals in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, a personal favourite among his pictures made in 1925. In one of them, Chaplin pretends to be a […]
Marianne Merten Citizens appearing in Cape Town’s tax court get more than they bargain for a lecture on civic responsibility and how not submitting tax returns undermines South Africa’s transformation. “This court is not an alien living on the moon, but part of society,” magistrate Nu’maan Long recently lectured an offender. A Cape Town businessman […]
Mail& Guardian reporter The Joubert Park Public Art Project (JPP) is hosting a major multi-disciplinary exhibition and series of events at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Joubert Park, which will run from October 13 until the end of December. With the focus on “public art” the JPP aims to address and engage the conditions, changes […]
PEDRO STEENKAMP, Walvis Bay | Friday NOT even the veteran fishermen in Walvis Bay can say exactly what is wrong. They can only speculate why the shoals of nearly all the fish species along the Namibian coast have vanished. But it’s a fact, they said: for nearly the whole of the past two months, the […]
BOXING Deon Potgieter Harry Simon, the first Namibian to win a boxing world title, is looking to further entrench his name in history by challenging for a world title in a higher weight division. Not only is Simon, the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) junior-middleweight champion, moving up in weight, he’s also moving up in quality. […]
Andries Oliphant speaks to Thebe Mabanga about a blueprint for development of the arts through corporate funding The Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) has done well but has a number of key areas to improve on, believes Andries Oliphant. “We set out to establish a sustainable trust whose funding benefit will be available in perpetuity […]
Barry Streek The South Africa-Zimbabwe border is leaking like a sieve with more than 200 holes in the security fence around the Beitbridge border post, army patrols that only come on duty at 10pm and widespread fraud and corruption. This has been reported by the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on home affairs. “We saw many […]
Glenda Daniels The grey area of what constitutes “unwanted” sexual conduct in the workplace will become clearer when a Labour Court case brought on behalf of a woman by the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town is heard in November. This will be the first time in South Africa that there is a claim for […]
Jaspreet Kindra “I have never been HIV-positive. I have never had Aids. It was part of a propaganda plot,” says Peter Mokaba, who read reports in some newspapers last year about his death. The former deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism, who was dropped by President Thabo Mbeki from his ministerial berth after the […]
Cheryl Goodenough Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Joyce Mabudafhasi has called on the youth to make their voices heard on environmental issues and to mobilise ahead of the World Summit for Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg next year. Mabudafhasi made her call to the 400 delegates from 27 countries who converged […]
Ngwako Modjadji The Land Claims Commission in the Northern Province is investigating the self-styled king of the Babirwa, Moses Mangena, who is allocating land he claims was removed from his people during apartheid. Mangena has lodged formal restitution claims for Bakgalaka and Nkuna land in the Lenyenye township. Land Claims Commission project officer Kgotatso Mokgakane […]
Women flocked to a Johannesburg hotel recently to learn how to solve their bedroom woes Mail & Guardian reporter South African husbands, partners or lovers would probably have loved to be a fly on the wall on the Park Hyatt hotel ballroom in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Tuesday night. The conversation over the foie gras and […]
whipping boy The KwaZulu-Natal season is still in full swing and on Saturday comes the chance for a choice selection of sprinters to show what they are made of in the R250 000 grade one Mercury Sprint at Clairwood Park. The Mercury is a weight-for-age event, meaning that in these final weeks of the season […]
Thuli Nhlapo Two government departments are divided over plans by a state oil prospecting company, to extend its operations into the war-torn Sudan. The Department of Foreign Affairs has warned the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs that plans by Soekor, a state-owned oil and gas exploration and production company, to extend its operations into […]
Byron Kennedy in London Just two of the five major South African companies listed on the London Stock Exchange will be included in the FTSE 4good indices when they go live at the end of July. South African Breweries (SAB) and Dimension Data both meet the required standards and are poised to join one of […]