Adam Levin tunes into aRt, SABC3s long- awaited arts and culture programme, for a touch of spine-chilling cultural diversity You wanted democratic processes. Well you got em. Mid-last year, when budget cuts snatched The Works and Arts Unlimited off the air, Auckland Park embarked on the unprecedented saga of selecting an external production house to […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon As the Cold War faltered and ended, the civilised world breathed a sigh of cautious relief. At incredible expense in lives and hope, rampant socialism had been put back in its box. Before that it had been Hitler, just as expensive to crate and pack away. And so the list goes […]
Andy Capostagno Tennis There is only one thing better than winning Wimbledon and thats winning it again, said the late Arthur Ashe. The 1975 mens champion just about summed up most peoples feelings about the All England Championships. For while Wimbledon is full of cant and class distinctions it is also full of people, and […]
Angella Johnson Pity Philippe Troussier. The Frenchman with the poor interpersonal skills has emerged as the national scapegoat for Bafana Bafana’s less- than-sparkling performance in the World Cup. The charges: that as a foreigner he lacks any real understanding of the way football is played in this country; and that he deliberately sabotaged the first […]
Alex Dodd When celebrated American playwright August Wilson first saw Athol Fugards Sizwe Bansi is Dead way back in 1976 at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre he was blown away. I thought This is great. I wonder if I could do something like this, he says. Two Pulitzer prizes later he still cites Fugard as a […]
The apartheid government was responsible for many disasters, but not for the Helderberg air crash, argues Robert Kirby Here’s a little paradox to tickle your logic. After carefully planning the crime, you have just shot and killed someone. Things don’t go as smoothly as you planned. As you hurry away from the scene of your […]
Saliem Fakir The United States government recently granted a patent to a company called Delta and Pine Land, giving it the rights to test and market new cotton seeds dubbed the “terminator seeds”. These are seeds that can genetically switch off plants’ ability to reproduce, by rendering subsequent seeds sterile. While the technology may be […]
Dan Glaister Three yars ago it seemed that British pop music was back to its best. Oasis and Blur were fighting it out for the number one spot, Pulp and Suede were in the wings, and the Britpop sound was set to conquer America. But today it is a different picture. Record sales are in […]
The government’s reluctance to hold Cabinet ministers accountable for their performance in office has reached ridiculous levels in the saga of Penuell Maduna, the minister of minerals and energy. This newspaper long ago pointed to Maduna’s recklessness and lack of judgment, suggesting he had neither the ability nor the temperament to head up such a […]
Ian Jack BEYOND BELIEF by VS Naipaul (Little, Brown R89,95) In 1979 and 1980, VS Naipaul made a tour of Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia and reached the conclusion, in Among the Believers, that Islam was a poor receptacle for political needs; it couldnt teach people how to run a modern state. Fifteen years later, […]