shepherds than the other Bethlehem’ Jon Ronson Gwylym Richards says that, in some ways, Bethlehem, Wales, is better than Bethlehem, the West Bank. “We’re a lovely place to pray and meditate,” he says. “The other Bethlehem is all about hustle and bustle, but we’re all about peace and quiet. Also, we’ve got more sheep and […]

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) […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Much like a father at the birth of his first child, most politicians who reach the top flirt, at least briefly, with an image of their own immortality. And it is one of those irritating paradoxes of which religious people are so fond, that to live on beyond our own deaths a little, a large […]

dream of freedom Anthony Holiday If the year 2000 marks the border of humankind’s entry into a futuristic fantasy, then the year 1999 places us on the fringes of that reverie. It will be a year of a dream about a dream wherein we taste the first false fruits of the promised land of an […]