Shaun de Waal CD of the week In the early Sixties, Ornette Coleman spearheaded a revolution in jazz, and this is the album that gave that new movement its name. Free Jazz is one of a handful of works re- released in deluxe (that is, fiddly sleeve-within- sleeve) packaging to celebrate the 50th birthday of […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg From the parking lot already, it is obvious that this is not going to be a regular evening at the theatre. There are large, mounted candles burning outside on the lawn of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereenigings’s Trap der Jeugd national monument building in Cottlesloe, Johannesburg, and there are […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE `They’ll come at night – especially if you’ve got an electric lamp glowing somewhere, a dead giveaway,” warned one member of an online survivalist conference. I had intended to spend the week doing extensive research for a column about the millennium bug (Y2K) – the software and hardware glitch that will prevent […]
warfare Stewart Dalby It is my wife’s birthday soon, and going through a catalogue from the London auctioneers, Bonham’s, has given me an original idea for a present. I work at home and look after the children. My wife goes to the office. In the evenings I moan about bringing up children without help and […]
Andy Duffy The Ministry of Education wants to spend R200-million this year to boost leadership skills in the provinces – a plan that will also give national officials far greater control over the often chaotic management of provincial education. The plans include setting up a rapid response unit to defuse provincial crises in areas such […]
Suzy Bell Should South African fashion be fun, or should it reflect urban decline? Debbie Reynolds, producer of the glamorous annual fashion event, the Durban Designer Collection (DDC) and lifestyle editor of the Independent on Saturday said of this year’s contest: “The brief to the designers and the judges was directional fashion. They were looking […]
Christopher Reed in Los Angeles After an acrimonious debate, the San Francisco school board has become the first in the United States to require students to read books by “authors of colour”. The measure caused conflict when proposed by two black members, who initially insisted that seven of the 10 required books on high school […]
Jacques Pauw, who implicated Ferdi Barnard in the murder of David Webster, reflects on the failure of the law to put away those who sent him to kill It was in the autumn of 1992 that I came face to face with Ferdinand Barnard for the first time. I had stood outside his Roodepoort home, […]
David Shapshak Now that Pakistan has shown the world that it could quietly purify enough plutonium for the five nuclear devices it detonated recently – and probably enough for many more – attention is turning to how to divorce nuclear weapons from nuclear power plants. And while conventional nuclear power stations have had a bad […]
Mungo Soggot A Canadian mining company has accused De Beers of trying to hijack its rights to mine a lucrative diamond field in the Northern Province. The company, Southern Era Resources, also believes old-guard government officials have conspired against its bid for a mining permit at the Marsfontein field. De Beers apparently passed over the […]