David Sharrock in Jerusalem Nine hundred years after the first crusaders reached Jerusalem on a mission to free the Holy City from Islamic control, massacring thousands of Jews and Muslims, a second wave of Western Christians arrived this week with a very different purpose – to apologise for the actions of their bloodthirsty forebears. The […]
Gavin Evans looks at the boxing future of Cornelius Sanders Cornelius Johannes Sanders, heavyweight king of South Africa and the parochial little universe of the World Boxing Union (WBU), is about to become a British product. As he explained it to me: “I’ve fought in the United Kingdom six times and I’ve had a great […]
William Fotheringham Cycling When it starts on Saturday in the Vende, this will be the Tour de France of crossed fingers, murmured prayers and nervous glances over Lycra-clad shoulders. For there was no precedent for last year’s disastrous, scandal-stricken Tour. This year’s race has been billed as “the Tour of reconstruction”, but events took on […]
Matthew Krouse The opening item on the programme of the National Arts Festival didn’t happen. The print of Athol Fugard’s 1991 celluloid version of Road to Mecca was damaged and replaced by his earlier Boesman and Lena. This gave patrons a chance to prepare a comparison of the version currently in production, with Angela Basset […]
Iden Wetherell Zimbabweans are at each others’ throats over the ground rules for a poll next year that could decide the future of President Robert Mugabe’s 19-year grip on power. At the centre of the controversy is a constitutional review process launched by the government in May in response to growing demands for reform to […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube Wet and worldly in the dreariest season. That’s the promise of M-Net’s winter line- up. There’s nothing local or of over- arching relevance on the pay channel in July – not that it’s criminal to propose ideology-free programming. On the contrary. When one watches television a lot, one eventually tires […]
The David Gleason Column Well, the great gaming fiasco has taken yet another (almost predictable) turn for the worse. Having made up its collective mind on one occasion, the previous Gauteng executive council declared to the high court that it was entirely satisfied with its decision and then, instructed to rethink, reversed course and handed […]
Ivor Powell While talks in Lusaka aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to stutter, the war is intensifying in the diamond-rich area around Mbuji Mayi. Congolese forces are reportedly under heavy attack in the town of Kabinda, 100km to the east of the diamond capital, Mbuji Mayi. They are […]
What light through yonder windshield breaks? I read the title of Mark Dunlop’s video work on the exhibition Truth Veils: The Inner City, currently on at the Rembrandt Gallery, after two weeks spent thinking about the Truth Veils project. In Dunlop’s video – a stylish and cleverly crafted sneer at white perceptions of Johannesburg as […]
Tony Twine Data published by Statistics South Africa (SSA), which effectively wrote the economic recession we thought we were living through out of the history books, appears to have been accepted by analysts, while astounding the man in the street. Is it simply smoke and mirrors, or something more sinister along revisionist lines? The definition […]