In the mystically charged Grahamstown, more drama took place in the streets than on the stages and in the theatres, writes John Matshikiza.
”Gone, by implication, are the days of slavery, colonialism and imperial arrogance. Gone is the world of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We live in a new age of enlightenment. Or so it seems, until you start listening to where the dialogue is heading”. John Matshikiza takes a look at new theatre production Blue/Orange.
In the 1970s and 1980s Paul Boateng was a prominent figure in Britain’s tumultuous era of political and racial struggle. He was wiry and animated, the firm set of his mouth and chin a hallmark of his articulate, legally trained passion for social justice, especially in the black cause.
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/ 12 November 2004
After strutting its stuff in London and Toronto, Zola Maseko’s Drum, finally being shown in South Africa at last. Maseko privately agrees that, to get the movie made at all, he was finally obliged to sup with the Hollywood devil, writes John Matshikiza.
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/ 21 December 2003
”It is something of a poignant moment at the famous address of 18 Tiergartenstrasse in the heart of Berlin. Eric Singh, veteran anti-apartheid campaigner and long-term resident of the old East Berlin, is shaking a friendly finger at his old adversary, former South African ambassador Donald Sole,” writes John Matshikiza.
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/ 27 September 2002
In recent weeks we have been assailed with news of a peace accord in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Significantly, the accord was signed at a formal ceremony in the South African administrative capital of Pretoria, with President Thabo Mbeki witnessing the historical agreement.
John Matshikiza hits back at revisionist Indian scholar Dinesh D’Souza’s defence of colonialism. What if Shaka had been left alone to build an unprecedented empire on the southern tip of Africa?
Mandla Langa and Hugh Masekela collaborate on a high-profile musical which premieres at Grahamstown. John Matshikiza reports.