Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg `So, how was the play?” asks a friend over dinner. How was the play? How do you describe Closer? A couple of hours after seeing Sello Maake ka Ncube’s production of Patrick Marber’s acclaimed contemporary British play, the whole thing is really only just beginning to sink in and […]
Diane Coetzer For weeks, I tried to prise a CV out of YFM station manager Randall Abrahams. When I met with him at the station’s funkily appointed offices in Gauteng’s Bez Valley, we never really got to the details of Abrahams’s radio career so far, beyond discussing his early days on the University of Cape […]
Suzy Bell Alfred Hitchcock fans will drool, and politically-sussed bhangra-babes will ditch their men for the night to watch award-winning Indian director Mani Ratnam’s film Irwar (The Duo). Yep, it’s the 19th Durban International Film Festival and there’s something for everyone among the 20 feature films and four documentaries. The films are mainly from Britain, […]
Dan Atkinson and Mail & Guardian reporter The World Cup hysteria which has obsessed South Africa confirmed the popularity of football, not to mention the power of marketing to induce frenzied emotion. This bodes well for the owners of any football teams which are planning to follow their overseas counterparts and list on the Johannesburg […]
Who was . . . Moshood Abiola? Richard Synge The extraordinary life of Moshood Abiola, who has died aged 60, apparently of a heart attack, while meeting an American delegation, matches the tumultuous pageant of Nigeria’s political life in which he played such a pivotal role. Abiola first came to prominence as an accountant for […]
Shaun de Waal It is, in my opinion, the best magazine in the country. Maybe I feel like that about SL magazine because about ten years ago I was involved in starting a magazine of South African “alternative” culture. It was short- lived. But things have changed enormously in the last decade. Rulers aside, what […]
`justice’ Tangeni Amupadhi Police officers are apparently turning to vigilantism because of growing disillusionment with the criminal justice system, says a research commissioned by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). In an incident earlier this year, Eastern Cape policemen shot dead four “fleeing robbers” in Umtata after they allegedly held up a Pep Stores branch and […]
offs Mukoni T Ratshitanga More than 200 Northern Province pensioners have taken court action against the provincial government’s decision to freeze pension and disability grants to 92 000 people. Court papers served this week on the province’s MEC for Health and Welfare, Hunadi Mateme, say the freeze should be invalidated on the grounds that it […]
Neil Manthorp in Amsterdam Cricket It is funny that we call ourselves a sports-crazy nation. There has never been a sports event in South Africa that has commanded, or even demanded, that the whole population sits up and takes notice. The Rugby World Cup final is an over- used example of when this was supposed […]
The taxpayer footed the bill for the 177 IFP participants in the Shell House inquest, writes Mungo Soggot The Legal Aid Board paid almost R10- million for the Inkatha Freedom Party’s legal representation at the Shell House inquest last year – as much as the board’s annual allowance to university legal aid clinics. The IFP […]