Sechaba ka’Nkosi Remember Musa Myeni? He was the Inkatha Freedom Party firebrand who once threatened to unleash 150 000 Zulu impis on Gauteng to deal with township residents. That was during the violence in the early 1990s between IFP-aligned hostel dwellers and youths on the Reef. Seven years later, he has substituted his political ideology […]
Alex Duval Smith Some things change – Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of Congo – but despots just change their spots. President Laurent-Dsir Kabila, hailed as heading a new breed of African leaders, increasingly looks like Mobutu Sese Seko, minus the leopard-skin hat. On May 17 1997, thousands of people welcomed Kabila’s victorious rebel […]
Ken Barris THE IBIS TAPESTRY by Mike Nicol (Knopf) The cover blurb describes The Ibis Tapestry as “a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today’s headlines”. An understandable bit of commercial fantasy perhaps, but wildly inaccurate, and unjust to a book that should be taken seriously on its own terms: as a referential maze […]
Phillip Kakaza CD of the week In the past four years the Blood and Fire label has established itself as the cutting edge label in reggae reissues. It introduced a whole generation of producers and DJs who took advantage of the new musical venture. Jamaican vocal singles were released with instrumentals – sometimes just rhythm […]
Matthew Krouse The profile of Boer women encouraged by historians was one of quiet endurance, of hard times in British concentration camps at the turn of the century. This is in sharp contrast to the picture of the Boer woman as a bearer of arms, in khaki fatigues, fighting a guerrilla war – but that […]
All Africa Three South African entries have been selected among the 23 films chosen by film awards advisor Lionel Ngakane to compete in this year’s 11th M-Net All Africa Film Awards. The three local films – Chikin Biznis: The Whole Story; Kaalgat Tussen die Daisies and The Sexy Girls – were selected together with the […]
Zwelithini-ka Mvelase Frankly, if South Africans respected and preserved what’s theirs, with as much jealousy as Americans do, there would be enough greats to fill volumes. Whether those names were crooks or saints, wouldn’t matter a dime. This flits past my mind as I sit sipping gin with die ouens and – boom! – we […]
The mussel, a shellfish long known as a gourmet treat for the rich, has gained new significance for a community living in poverty on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast. For the people of Sokhulu, mussels are not a luxury, but a necessity – a valuable regular source of protein which keeps starvation at bay. Before 1996, […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby August 1 1998 was a big day for South African rugby, but will it be bigger or more important than August 7? On August 1 the contractual agreement between the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) and the squad which won the World Cup in 1995 came to an end. On Friday, […]
As one of South Africa’s major outsider artists faces the loss of his unique Clarens homestead, Matthew Krouse and Alex Dodd journey to the source of a town’s painful conflict A Kafkaesque man in a black suit and tie flees across a surreal red landscape populated by creatures that could come from land or sea, […]