Stephen Gray Silence descends on a festival venue as the last audience heads off. Performers who have displayed all their talents, their heads echoing with the adrenaline of applause, wonder where the next job is. They start planning for the next National Arts Festival. Annual visitors who packed their programmes from breakfast to bed, cheaply […]
Mungo Soggot The heads of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Scorpions have been exchanging letters about their strained relationship after fresh claims by police that the elite unit hijacks cases from the men in blue. There has long been rivalry between the Directorate of Special Operations (or the Scorpions) and the police, […]
TENNIS Nicholas Wood in Split Goran Ivanisevic brought Split to a halt on Tuesday. Just over 24 hours after claiming the Wimbledon title, the rank outsider went home to a welcome never seen before in Croatia. A crowd estimated at 150 000 thronged the port as the new champion entered the port by boat, accompanied […]
Paul Kirk A senior Technikon Natal accountancy lecturer who has been found guilty of plagiarism was charged with housebreaking and slapped with a restraining order by the terrified lecturer who blew the whistle on his fake degree. The Mail & Guardian reported in March that Ian dey van Heerden’s PhD in business management was withdrawn […]
Sculpture provides an unexpected connection between two cities, writes Clive Chipkin Both Vancouver and Johannesburg began as late-19th century urban settlements that rapidly grew into sophisticated world cities. Both were founded in 1886 and both celebrated their golden jubilees in 1936 with an exchange of greetings between sister cities of the empire. This resulted in […]
David Macfarlane The Eastern Cape Department of Education has spent more than R1-million of taxpayers’ money on a fruitless 18-month campaign to transfer nine teachers against their will to other schools. The Labour Court has now found in favour of the teachers and ordered the MEC for education and the department’s superintendent general to pay […]
Paul Christelis is a South African writer living in London. His first novel, Rabbit Season, is published this week by M&GBooks/comPress. Here we excerpt a childhood flashback The doctor searches all over me, with a magnifying glass, a stethoscope and a small cold hammer. “Now tell me what this feels like?” and he jabs me. […]
The unit trust industry has a lot of work to do if it wants to regain the trust of small investors Neil Thomas The unit trust industry is making much of the relative recovery in the local equities market this year. It’s doubtful, though, that investors bruised by more than two years of unit trust […]
The only arrests at Bredell were for indecent exposure. On Thursday night the squatters were left at the mercy of the elements Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Bongani Majola and Khadija Magardie The early morning mist hanging over Bredell, Kempton Park, on Thursday made visibility difficult. But when trucks arrived and disgorged a few hundred men, […]
A SECOND LOOK Sean Jacobs and Judith February The recent events at Bredell near Kempton Park illustrate citizens’ growing impatience with the government’s failure to deliver more speedily. The government faces similar challenges of delivery of other basic services such as water, electricity and sewerage. Because of a lack of resources, one of the ways […]
Andrew Botha makes his directorial debut in Pro Musica’s production of Rigoletto. It won’t be ordinary, writes Paul Boekkooi After being involved in more than 60 opera productions in South Africa and internationally, Andrew Botha is confident of breaking with tradition in Verdi’s Rigoletto. “I know there’s a strong buzz around the fact that ‘here […]
A SECOND LOOK Belinda Beresford Poor South Africans can take anti-retroviral drugs to combat HIV as effectively and safely as patients elsewhere in the world, local researchers have proved. A study released this week flies in the face of local and international justifications for withholding antiretroviral drugs from South Africans. Such arguments have included cost […]
A SECOND LOOK Joachim Wehner In its latest submission, the Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC) presents some valuable recommendations on local government finance. At the same time, however, the commission fails to present concrete figures on the recommended slicing of the fiscal cake. The lack of specificity and seemingly dwindling commitment by the commissioners are […]
Sherilee Bridge Investors spooked by the bloodbath on the global equities markets are being forced to find safer havens for their capital. South African investors have taken so well to the lower risk of the Saitrix 40 a fund that tracks the performance of the JSE Securities Exchange’s top 40 stocks that the unit trust […]
Henrietta Mqokomiso is taking on the City of Johannesburg after she was evicted from her home Nawaal Deane The Legal Resources Centre is preparing a landmark legal battle on behalf of Henrietta Mqokomiso, who was evicted from her house in Alexandra township three weeks ago. The Mail & Guardian reported last month on Mqokomiso’s plight […]
Elvis and John Lennon have monuments, museums and disciples, but Bob Marley’s legacy is less clear. John Aizlewood travels to Kingston to ask his friends and collaborators: what does Marley mean now, 20 years after his death? Native Jamaicans call the administrative district of St Ann, north-west of King-ston, the “Garden parish”. They have a […]
WEST African finance ministers said on Monday they were concerned about inflationary pressures hanging over the region’s economic activities. The regional Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) said in a statement the economic activity continues to suffer from “unfavourable external and internal conditions”, adding that economic growth in 2001 will be “less important than […]
THE media in Angola is operating under increasingly difficult conditions, Open Society representative and freelance journalist Rafael Marques said in a statement on Monday. The statement coincided with a decision by independent Catholic-run Radio Ecclesia to suspend all news reports in favour of religious broadcasts. The station also counseled Angolans to pray. Marques attributed the […]
CANADIAN authorities, with the help of US officials, arrested three Toronto residents on Tuesday, in connection with a multi-million-dollar letter scam carried out in Canada and Nigeria. An estimated 300 US, European and Asian residents — but no Canadians — have been bilked out of amounts ranging from $52 000 to five million, Ross said […]
ONE of the main armed Hutu opposition groups in Burundi on Tuesday accused the mainly Tutsi government of using a fishing ban for self-enrichment and to starve those its accuses of helping rebel fighters. On June 25, the government banned fishing on two ports on Lake Tanganyika, Runonge and Nyanza-Lac, citing security reasons and claiming […]
AN Egyptian man was alleged on Tuesday to have tortured his wife and shaved off her hair, both with a barber’s electric shears, after she asked for more money to spend on the home. The woman, appearing bald at a police station here, filed a police report alleging her 32-year-old husband used the tool to […]
THE World Bank announced Monday it has approved a $90,3-million interest-free loan to Nigeria to support the government’s three-year HIV/Aids action plan. The loan, which will also assist in the development of a long-term strategy, is to be repaid over 35 years, starting with a 10-year grace period. Nigeria has the fourth worst HIV/Aids infection […]
A FIVE -minute power outage at the closing ceremony of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit during an address by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sent his security corps into a panic. Minutes before the end of his speech, a power cut plunged the Mulungushi conference centre into total darkness, prompting at least half a […]
A United Nations panel of experts on Monday ended a week-long visit to Liberia aimed at reviewing sanctions imposed by the international body for Monrovia’s perceived support to Sierra Leonean rebels. Martin Chungong Ayafor, who headed the five-member team, told journalists that the panel had held discussions with government officials and private groups. Ayafor said […]
EIGHT pro-democracy groups under the umbrella of the Swaziland Democratic Alliance (SDA) asked King Mswati III on Wednesday to revoke a controversial decree which reinforces his powers over the judiciary. The groups charged that the decree, promulgated on June 23, infringes basic freedoms and liberties. “We urge you, Your Majesty, to revoke the decree together […]
Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTHERN Africa is expected to face an overall cereal deficit this year with only Malawi and South Africa forecast to produce a small surplus, a regional early warning unit said in its latest report. Cereal production, which includes the regional staple maize, is expected to be down by 17%, the Famine Early […]
A NORTHERN Province hospital patient disappeared from his bed on Saturday only to be found dead behind the hospital four days later. Motshine Pheeha (31) of Inveran village was found dead in a trench near the perimeter fence behind Helena Frans Hospital in Bochum on Wednesday morning. Pheeha had been admitted to the hospital with […]
MOZAMBIQUE plans to build a major dam in the southern Maputo province to control flood waters, the government announced this week. The dam in Moamba district, in Maputo province, 70km west of Maputo, is expected to cost $360-million, the ministry of public works and housing said in a statement. The African Development Bank will fund […]
STUDENTS at Zimbabwe’s government universities and technical colleges face skyrocketing school fees, which are to be multiplied by as much as 40 times, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Thursday. The increases, which will go into effect next month, follow two months of rumbling protests by students against the government over inadequate allowances. University students […]
GERMANY has pledged 87-million dinars ($59-million) in aid to Tunisia to be spent on environmental, industry and water projects, the Tunisian news agency TAP reported Monday. The accord, covering the period 2001-02, was signed at the weekend by Uschi Eid, a senior official of the German economic cooperation ministry, the official news agency said. State […]
KENYAN Muslim clerics on Wednesday condemned the government’s plans to import and freely distribute hundreds of millions of condoms. “This is a wrong signal the authorities are sending to our youth about promiscuous sex and it proves that sex, any kind of sex, is cool and tolerable,” Kenya’s National Council of Imams chairman Sheikh Ali […]
A FATHER and five children were massacred by an armed group near Tiaret in northwestern Algeria, local residents said on Tuesday. The home of the family of eight in the hamlet of Ziana near the town of Oued Lili, some 340km west of Algiers, was attacked overnight on Monday, the sources said. The assailants shot […]