Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
2012 wraplatest news & developments
From performing nose surgery to grooming a virtual horse

Most bizarre iPad and iPhone apps of 2012

From performing nose surgery to grooming a virtual horse, iPad apps are sometimes addictive, sometimes useless, and other times just downright weird.

The coal stockpile levels are at 35 days

Don’t pooh-pooh the benefits of biogas

Biogas digesters, which are commonly seen in many Asian countries, are among the most viable immediate green energy prospects in South Africa.

Furry is a new form of participatory pop culture.

OMG!!! *sobs* Your furry is giving me feels

Welcome to the world of furry: a bizarre, sometimes pornographic, rambunctious new form of participatory pop culture.

Phillip Tobias was one of the world’s leading palaeoanthropologists and one of South Africa’s greatest scholars.

RIP: Those who left us in 2012

We look back at those who died in 2012.

Graeme Pope-Ellis.

Addicted to extreme performance

Endurance sports for amateurs are growing in number as junkies chase their next high, writes enthusiast Richard Poplak.

Panic and confusion: Police officers firing at striking miners outside Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine left many wounded and dead in their wake.

Marikana: Truth, memory and reportage

Telling the real story behind the shocking killings on the koppie of Lonmin’s Marikana mine was never going to be easy, writes Kwanele Sosibo.

Gareth Pon’s photograph was taken through a glass pane from the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Newtown

Instagram turns amateurs into artists

With her thumbs and a phone and despite zero artistic background, Verashni Pillay got her first exhibition.

Fisherman Kevin Hammond is opposed to the nuclear project.

There goes the neighbourhood…and here comes nuclear

What happens when government plans to build a nuclear plant in your hometown? Lionel Faull went to the Eastern Cape to find out.

Under the ‘surface web’ is a vast

WTF: The internet’s secretive hangouts

Niren Tolsi goes deep into the web to find the underground world that lives on the Hidden Wiki.

With Cosatu’s growth has emerged a new hierarchical structure.

Cosatu: A labouring behemoth finally reaches the crossroads

The mighty Cosatu once revolutionised the labour scene, but did its transformation into an efficient bureaucracy unwittingly lead to Marikana?

CTMI’s headquarters in Mauritius.

New Jo’burg church has more than a whiff of cult

Victoria John reported on an infamous Mauritius institution in 2009. When a new branch opened in Johannesburg, she took another look.

Jub Jub and his then girlfriend Kelly Khumalo at the Protea Magistrate’s Court in Soweto.

Jub Jub: The life and trial of a South African child star

The story of Molemo Maarohanye is about far more than a celebrity gone bad. Bongani Madondo tracks the breathtaking rise of the new money culture.

Thabo Sabeko with the van in which he transports sea creatures to schools.

The closing of Tygerberg Zoo

Tygerberg Zoo, in the Western Cape, became the latest casualty in the changing nature of conservation, writes Sean O’Toole.

Democratic Alliance national spokesperson Mmusi Maimane arranged a meeting with Jessica Leandra and Tshidi Thamana after their Twitter spat.

Controversial SA tweets of 2012

We round up the cringe-worthy, jaw-dropping South African Twitter blunders of 2012.

Nine sexist statements that rocked 2012

Important people make idiotic remarks all the time, but these are now so much easier to appreciate thanks to the viral power of social media.