Ntuthuko Maphumulo soccer Four of Africa’s greatest soccer teams were hit by tragedy earlier this year when fans were killed in two crowd stampedes barely a month apart. At this year’s Vodacom Challenge the ancestors and spirits of those who died at the Ellis Park stampede and in Accra will finally be laid to rest. […]
BRITISH Royal Engineers have defused a 112.5 kilogram bomb in the northern Sierra Leonean town of Kambia, state radio reported on Thursday. The bomb was discovered by the Sierra Leone army in Kambia, about 80 kilometres north of Freetown, after the town was evacuated by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels following a disarmament pact. The […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi A retired public prosecutor from the Johannesburg Magistrate Courts’ traffic division has launched a lone crusade against wheel clamping and fining at shopping malls. Roy Welsh has embarked on a mission to put the two practices on trial, believing that they violate motorists’ constitutional rights to a free and fair trial. He is […]
Glenda Daniels The Department of Labour has slammed employers for using “racist assumptions” as excuses not to hire black people and to test prospective employees for HIV/Aids. In the latest Department of Labour equity report, 31% of employers cited HIV/Aids as a barrier to implementing equity. The equity legislation was formulated by the government to […]
Peta Lee She-Mail Ever dropped a pumpkin from a respectable height and watched it splatter into mushy pieces on concrete? That’s more or less what happens to babies and toddlers who aren’t strapped into car seats during an accident. “They look just like smashed pumpkins,” says Maxine Hall, general manager of Durban’s Amahosp Medical Rescue […]
If a political party is intent on posing as a paragon of virtue it would be wise to behave like one. The Democratic Alliance has been prone to postures of this kind. Yet, for the second time in the six months since it took power in the city of Cape Town, it has been found […]
POLICE in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos have taken into care 16 children aged from one-and-a-half to nine and are questioning a businesswoman suspected of trafficking in children. The children were found by police late on Tuesday packed into a mini-bus in Lagos. Police had taken the children to a juvenile welfare centre in the city. […]
A lawyer’s letter has revealed how Umgeni Water tried to cover up its illegal activities Paul Kirk The Mail & Guardian has obtained documentary proof that a cash-strapped parastatal organisation, Umgeni Water, has illegally tapped the telephones of serving and past senior employees as well as members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ […]
Debi Diedericks ‘Have you ever driven a car on a flat piece of land as fast as you can blindfolded?” Obie Oberholzer asks. I shake my head. “The longest I’ve lasted was four minutes.” That is the spirit of famous South African photographer Obie Oberholzer whose work work will be on exhibit at the Standard […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Here you are one evening, an ordinary husband, chatting with your neighbour’s husband on the pavement outside your house. Suddenly, around the corner comes an SABC television cameraman. He don’t say nuttin’, he don’t plant ‘taters he just keep his camera rolling along. Then he piss off hastily out of sight. A […]
A handwriting expert has confirmed that some of the petition lists had been entirely composed by the same person Mungo Soggot The office of Peter Marais, the Democratic Alliance mayor of Cape Town, has been presiding over a vote-rigging exercise to have two prominent streets named after former presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. […]
A Namibian policeman is to be charged with murder and attempted murder after shooting two South Africans, killing one and wounding the other. Namibian police representative Chief Inspector Hofni Hamufungu said charges had been laid against the policeman but declined to release his name. The policeman apparently opened fire last Thursday on Bloemfontein shop-fitter Manuel […]
Roshila Pillay Senior academic staff at Vista University are furious about the extravagance of one of the campus rectors, who commutes between Pretoria and Bloemfontein at a cost of about R1 700 a trip. Professor Talvin Schultz, the principal both of Vista’s Bloemfontein campus and the Thaba Nchu College of Education (which is now managed […]
A recent court ruling challenges us to consider how environmental rights should be balanced against socio-economic rights Jenny Hall, Robyn Stein and Claire Tucker At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, poverty “alleviation” was recognised as a key to achieving “sustainable development”. When we host Rio+10 next year, this issue will, no doubt, be an […]
Steven Friedman worm’s eye view For a while the African National Congress leadership has been eager to use its majority in Parliament to impose its will. In the public accounts and safety and security committees, the ANC has used its votes to ensure that the will of its leaders is served. Outside the house, groups […]
Three days before the 1998 Tour de France a little-known team assistant, Willy Voet, was stopped by customs officials on the Franco-Belgian border. What they found in the back of his car stunned the world of professional cycling. This is his story Willy Voet was born in the Belgian town of Hofstade on July 4 […]
A FORMER project consultant of the controversial Mpumalanga Development Corporation (MDC) appeared for the second time in the Nelspruit District Court on Monday on fraud charges amounting to R1-million. The case against Mafa Obed Maseko, 44, of Kamagugu near Nelspruit was postponed and he is out on R5_000 bail. He has not yet been asked […]
Roshila Pillay The rector and vice-chancellor of Vaal Technikon, Aubrey Mokadi, has allegedly been abusing technikon funds. Senior technikon staff and students frustrated with Mokadi’s running of the institution are accusing the rector of victimisation, mismanagement and nepotism. This is not the first time the rector stands accused on these charges. In 1998 the Mail […]
Sam Moiloa, Johny Mphou and Trevor Ngwane a second look When Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils gave his budget speech on May 15, he dropped a bombshell that few listeners noticed. Kasrils endorsed what many environmentalists say is the single most damaging attack on nature in world history, the Three Gorges dam […]
Paul Kirk Petrol dealers in the coastal areas of KwaZulu-Natal are gearing up to give the cold shoulder to hot petrol. At the end of this month the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) will convene a meeting to discuss what is to be done about hot, warm and cold petrol. As petrol heats it […]
Garry Mulholland CD OFTHEWEEK The real clue to What the Manics Did Next had nothing to do with launching their sixth album in Cuba, nor their much-hyped return to a revolutionary punk-rock agenda. Nope, the real clue was tucked away on the B-side of last year’s limited-edition, back-to-basics, number one single Masses Against the Classes, […]
ANGOLANS will enjoy risk-free viewing of the solar eclipse of June 21 thanks to a government expenditure of three million dollars on protective glasses, the science and technology ministry said on Tuesday. The total eclipse, which will cross Angola along a 200km band, will last the longest – more than four and a half minutes […]
REBELS in Sierra Leone have released 150 children, among them 40 girls, from an eastern stronghold in Kailahun, the UN Children’s Fund Unicef announced on Tuesday. The children, aged eight to 18 years old, were freed on Monday and airlifted Tuesday to Daru, some 50km away where they were received by staff from the aid […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Wednesday TWELVE sugar cane farms in eastern South Africa have been torched and about 1_000 black families are occupying portions of 63 sugar farms in a land dispute that has turned violent, a farmer said on Tuesday. Police and soldiers have been on the farms since last week to protect […]
KIGALI | Thursday RWANDAN Hutu rebels have suffered major losses in the bloodiest outbreak of fighting the country has seen for years, losing 150 men in a clash with government troops, according to the army. The Rwandan army said it had killed at least 150 Hutu extremist rebels on Wednesday as they tried to enter […]
HARARE | Thursday CHENJERAI Hitler Hunzvi, the militant leader of Zimbabwe’s liberation war veterans who died on Monday, has been declared a national hero by the ruling party. The staunch ally of President Robert Mugabe will be buried on Friday at the North Korean-built Heroes’ Acre, a shrine traditionally reserved for prominent members of the […]
DEFENCE lawyers on Tuesday finished their summing up in the case of two nuns accused by a Belgian court of taking part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that claimed up to 800_000 lives. The two lawyers representing one of the nuns, Sister Kizito, rejected the testimony of prosecution witnesses, describing their statements as a […]
DEFENCE lawyers on Tuesday finished their summing up in the case of two nuns accused by a Belgian court of taking part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that claimed up to 800_000 lives. The two lawyers representing one of the nuns, Sister Kizito, rejected the testimony of prosecution witnesses, describing their statements as a […]
NAIROBI | Tuesday CONCERNS over the environmental and social effects of a Japanese-funded hydro-electric power project in Kenya are threatening to stall construction of the dam, a Japanese diplomat said on Tuesday. The first phase of the Sondu-Miriu hydro-electric power project in the west of the country is almost complete at a cost of $55-million. […]
PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday DURBAN’S R10-million metro police video surveillance system has caught out a rogue metro cop – nearly three years after he attacked a handcuffed suspect for no apparent reason. This week the Mail & Guardian was given a copy of a police videotape that clearly shows an obviously defenceless suspect being […]
TWENTY people were injured in Malawi on Tuesday when supporters of President Bakili Muluzi’s ruling party clashed with opposition supporters in the capital Lilongwe, witnesses said. The witnesses said the United Democratic Front’s youth wing – the Young Democrats – were targetting supporters of National Democratic Alliance, led by Brown Mpinganjira, a former cabinet minister. […]
HARARE | Wednesday TELEVISION authorities in Zimbabwe have banned a new live weekly talk show that was highly critical of President Robert Mugabe’s policies and actions, the local media reported on Wednesday. The discussion programme “Talk to the Nation”, sponsored by pro-government civic organisation the National Development Assembly (NDA), flighted just three times before it […]