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 […]

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 […]

Angolans are press-ganged into a conflict that began before they were born and where greed has overtaken ideology. Chris McGreal reports This is not a good year for the self-styled “Joao the Survivor” to turn 21. A few weeks before his birthday the Angolan army called up men born in 1978 to throw into the […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North I wonder whether Congolese politicians realise the impatience and irritation with which the rest of us in Africa look on as they squabble over the terms of the peace agreement that could give their country a chance to recover from the ravages of Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocratic rule? Don’t […]

Paul Trueman Online gaming is the fastest-growing industry on the Internet, where players spend hours online sharing information … and killing each other. Some friends and I blew up the Death Star last night, freeing the galaxy from the emperor’s evil tyranny. Not bad for a night’s work. I used to be someone who got […]