Denise Rack Louw `Seeing how the violence around us has affected the lives of the youth I work with is what motivated me to write this show,” says dramatist and director Jerry Pooe of his musical, Peace in the Valley, currently enjoying a run at Durban’s Bat Centre. Singer, guitarist and actress Tu Nokwe composed […]

Friday night : Charl Blignaut It’s Friday night and you’re driving through Pretoria – the new, improved Pretoria. If it weren’t for the lingering scent of Jacaranda blossoms, you’d hardly recognise the place. There are trendy cafs and happy, shiny people where once were butch Tukkies engineering students with bad hairstyles. (Once I witnessed a […]

Lauren Shantall A B-grade Barbie-rella babe in a yellow polka dot rubber bikini steps s on to the stage. Armed with a hairdryer-cum-ray gun she begins to blow up a flaccid yellow blob while the soundtrack blares a kooky, surreal mix of Plan Nine From Outer Space meets Mars Attack on an operating table. As […]

Fiona Macleod Riccardo Ghiazza, the animal dealer at the centre of the furore about the export of 30 baby elephants from the Tuli bushlands, sold two African elephants to pop idol Michael Jackson in 1993. Jackson is listed by the United States Fisheries and Wildlife as one of the American clients who have bought more […]

Residents of De Buldt in the Karoo now have the resources to rebuild their homes, writes Tara Turkington At the end of a long dirt road in the barren Karoo lies a place where residents defied apartheid, and got away with it. Although now almost a ruin, a major award has given it a brighter […]

Justin Arenstein The African National Congress used taxpayers’ money to fund at least one of its provincial congresses in Mpumalanga in 1996. The party also appears to have actively courted the Mpumalanga Parks Board for cash donations totalling more than R105 000 and sponsorship of T-shirts, caps and satchels. The allegations, which are being probed […]

Philip Machanick Just when you thought it safe to use the Internet, junk mail sharks have started to bite. What’s more, they’re made of spam. Thanks to “bulk mail e-mail lists”, millions of users of the Internet can be hit at once with unwanted mail, selling anything from porn to more bulk e-mail lists. Sellers […]

Spielberg has done it again. This time with an animated TV series that will keep young and old at home on Wednesday nights. Alex Dodd reports The Japanese might have been churning out magnificent manga for years, but – make no mistake – when Steven Spielberg puts his name behind an animated series for TV, […]

MUNGO SOGGOT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. A CONSORTIUM headed up by head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s reparations committee Hlengiwe Mkhize is tipped to win a major government diamond valuation contract. The Diamond Board has yet to announce the winner, but rival bidders, who have expressed misgivings about the tender process, claim Mkhize’s consortium […]

Chiara Carter and Marianne Merten A legend who lived a fast life and died a hard death is the inevitable epitaph for slain Cape Town gang leader Jackie Lonte. Lonte – born Neville Heroldt -scripted his life like a B-grade gangster movie and mythologised himself in a city where his gang, the Americans, has resonance […]