Brenda Atkinson Mixed Media A couple of months ago, an excitable tide of telltale rippled through the Johannesburg ad industry. Mike Schalit, creative director at Net#work and outgoing chair of the Creative Directors’ Forum (CDF), had called upon all CDF affiliated agencies to take up the cudgels for creativity in this country by toppling John […]

Howard Barrell CONSOLIDATING DEMOCRACY: SOUTH AFRICA’S SECOND POPULAR ELECTION by Tom Lodge (Witwatersrand University Press) AFRICAN DEMOCRACY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALISATION by Jonathan Hyslop (Witwatersrand University Press) When people start talking of “miracles” to explain unexpected political developments, one can usually smell intellectual surrender. For, if they are anything, miracles are supposed to be […]

What’s new? The lovely Ananova will soon be reading the news on the Press Association’s website – and working 24 hours a day without any breaks for eating or sleeping or visiting the bathroom. She is a vactor (virtual actor) or “synthespian” created by Digital Animations, and she uses text-to-speech software from Lernout & Hauspie. […]

Telford Vice looks at the shenanigans behind the resignation of United Cricket Board president Ray White The covers were peeled off South African cricket at the weekend, and the cracks in the exposed surface were more than superficial. On Saturday, Ray White bowed to pressure from within and resigned as president of the United Cricket […]

Stefaans Brmmer The Mmakau villagers first knew there was trouble 18 months ago when the baboons came down from the hills. Little could they have known that the primates were harbingers of a saga that would split the community and draw in controversial granite magnate Fred Keeley, relatives of Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe […]

MPUMALANGA’s sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, and three co-accused admitted to using almost R1-million in State funds to buy themselves houses and other personal items on Wednesday. Maropeng, legislature secretary Wilson Ngwenya, legislature finance director Jomo Siboza and former legislature secretary Alfred Mahlangu signed the admissions as part of a bid to speed up their […]

Guy Willoughby speaks to Marthinus Basson about his latest collaboration with poet/playwright Breyten Breytenbach Marthinus Basson – design-directorial supremo, arts propagandist, all-round theatre maestro – is snatching coffee and koek between final rehearsals of The Life and Times of Johnny Cockroach, his latest explosive collaboration with poet-turned- playwright Breyten Breytenbach. Restlessly pacing the noisy Nico […]

Letter from the North

cash Luvuyo Kakaza Creative minds stand to win mega prizes in the second annual Hansa Pilsener Cool Sounds Songwriting competition when winners are announced in March. In a departure from the usual Shell Road to Fame talent search for performing artists, the songwriting competition does not require entrants to perform, but to compose songs in […]

When Ian Player won the first Dusi in 1951, he did so without much in the way of outside help. Last weekend more than 150 policemen and dozens of soldiers, sailors and firemen helped to make the race safer for more than 2 000 competitors. Gavin Foster reports Three helicopters, 39 pistol-packing motorcyclists and 40 […]