Best South African avant-jazz album:A tie between Zim Ngqawana, for Zimology – a burning free-blowing session -and Moses Molelekwa, for Genes and Spirits, where jazz pianistics meet the new era of drum’n’bass. And praise be to Sheer Sounds and MELT 2000, who recorded them. Best South African commercial jazz album:Paul Hanmer’s smoothly and confidently laid-back […]

Andrew Worsdale With at least a week of rest and relaxation ahead, why not unwind in front of the big screen? With a host of movies opening over the next fortnight, there’s something for the whole family. The teen movie I’ll Be Home for Christmas heads the list. Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of Home Improvement fame) […]

RUGBY Andy Capostagno It is always harder to stomach defeat when it is unexpected. It is like living on a diet of milk and honey and then being sent to bed with a spoonful of castor oil. But Christmas is a time for giving, so how appropriate that the Springboks should end their tour of […]

Stuart Hess In 10 years’ time traditional herbalists, faith healers and bone throwers could be examining patients who are admitted to public hospitals. In terms of new proposals before government, traditional healers will have to register with an association, which could eventually see them plying their trade at institutions such as Groote Schuur, Chris Hani […]

There is nothing like the stroke of a pen to lighten a presidential load. United States President Bill Clinton not only lit White House intern Monica Lewinsky’s fire, he was also every cartoonist’s dream come true. A plethora of phallic symbols was sketched, like Zapiro’s version of Airforce One. One US cartoonist went for the […]

A hard-hitting exhibition in Rotterdam examines South Africa’s built environment. Ferial Haffajee was there The landscape of the next millennium in South Africa will overwhelmingly be the landscape of an apartheid past. The physical form of this new country is yet to be made. Now and for the next years it will remain a space […]

LOOSE CANNON: Robert Kirby Despite the seasonal rush, it arrived just in time to top-up their Christmas hampers. From humble purse-snatcher, through rapist, murderer, fraudster and paedophile, to international car-hijack operative, the members of the South African criminal community are fair yowling with yuletide gratitude as they welcome yet another priceless gift brought them by […]

currency Martin Walker in Brussels looks at what the coming year holds in store for Europe The last year of the millennium is for Europeans the first year of the new order. Everything changes, starting with the birth of the single currency and the launch of the German presidency of the European Council. If the […]

Andy Capostagno Cricket The West Indies lost the second Test so badly that logic dictates the only way is up. But cricket is not always a logical game, even if it is sometimes extremely predictable. There has been talk of regeneration, but it would take an optimist of Pollyanna proportions to believe that the third […]

censorship were over? Brenda Atkinson As the second Johannesburg Biennale limped into the early weeks of 1998, it seemed for a while that post- international-schmoozing stress disorder might have taken the tart out of art. Fatigued by working, networking, or just plain complaining, contemporary artists countrywide curled into introspection for the first half of the […]