Chris Roper The Smirnoff International Fashion Awards proved one thing: the fashion world is almost always at least five years behind whatever is culturally and ideologically current. This was brought home to me forcibly when I took my seat and found myself impaled on a glass ashtray. They’re actually encouraging people to smoke in the […]
Alex Sudheim On show in Durban As a storyteller, Alson Ntshangase is more of a Dostoevsky than a Wordsworth. His darkly glowing paintings betray the workings of a mind far more interested in the skull beneath than the skin above. “If I start painting a rose I feel I am wasting my paint because I […]
Antjie Krog’s book on the truth commission has been highly acclaimed. But, argues Claudia Braude, Krog is too creative with the truth Fact, fiction or falsehood? The question is everywhere in reading poet and journalist Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull (Random House). It is the first book on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), […]
Phillip Kakaza Rock In black jeans and fuzzy T-shirts, four- piece band Metal Orizon could easily be mistaken for an Afro-pop band. Yet even before you see them perform, the name Metal Orizon gives you a clue as to what these funky Tswana dudes are up to. Unusually for black people, they are into heavy […]
Adam Mars-Jones THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS McNULTY by Sebastian Barry (Picador, R110) Sebastian Barry’s new novel is so full of magnetising beauty that it all but harasses a reader into submission. You can try to protest, to say, “I’m a reader and you’re a book, can we not keep this on a professional basis?”, but […]
After Jackie Brown and Get Shorty he’s hot in Hollywood and hailed as a literary genius by writers like Amis and Bellow. But few realise that the king of crime fiction thinks most filmed versions of his novels have been junk. Lawrence Donegan reports In the Squad Seven room at 1300 Beaubein beats the dark […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE No matter how much we might love to hate Bill Gates, we can’t help but have mixed feelings about the United States Justice Department and the two dozen or so states suing Microsoft for violating anti-trust laws. Fresh from their unsatisfying victory-with- no-spoils over the tobacco industry last season, US attorneys general […]
Bongani Siqoko Drunken men and women’s voices rise from the beer hall in Monyakeng township, Wesselbron, about 45km from Kroonstad in the Free State. Life seems normal, but the truth is the exact opposite. This community is grief-stricken and angry over the death of Lethusang Mohloane – whose only sin was to shoot birds on […]
code Nick Hopkins and Keith Devlin When The Bible Code was published, even the most grudging cynics had to admit something astonishing was afoot. The book claimed to have discovered hidden messages within the scriptures which predicted major events in world history. References to World War II, the Gulf conflict, the assassination of John F […]
Inga Latham On stage in Cape Town In the Coffee Lounge in Cape Town, comedian Chris McEvoy is warming up with Sczhoid before the Grahamstown run of his one-man show, Bitter. After the three flights of stairs up to the Top Floor Theatre, McEvoy is lucky any of us still have breath with which to […]