Peter Mullan, winner of the best actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has a tale to tell those who wonder if it all might go to his head. It stems from his experience working on Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winner about the exploits of William Wallace. Mullan remembers watching the director of the second […]
Stephen Bierley questions the sincerity of two potential tennis champions May in Paris and the great names are lined up for the French Open: Chiroubles, Fleurie, Morgon, Moulin-a- Vent. And then there are the tennis players. The intense heat of Melbourne, the mayhem of Flushing Meadow and the unremitting pressure of Wimbledon seem a world […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer When the World Cup draw was made in chilly Marseille last December, France and Denmark expressed happiness bordering on arrogance after being placed in the same group as minnows Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Recent events suggest it may not be quite so easy for the French and Danes with the Saudis […]
Krisjan Lemmer Squabbling continues unabated between the one-time “star” witness in the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela scandal, Katiza Cebekhulu, and his former mentor, Emma Nicholson, now dignified as Baroness Nicholson Of Winterbum (or something like that). Writing to The Guardian newspaper in Britain, Katiza complains that the dame continues to cling to the copyright to his own […]
Phillip Kakaza A melancholic nostalgia sweeps through Woza! – the Civic Theatre’s celebration of 40 years of South African musicals – as the soulful voices of Wendy Mseleku and Sibongile Mngoma and the tap-dancing feet of Somizi Mhlongo tour memory lane. King Kong’s blues number Back of the Moon and Ipi Ntombi’s Mama Thembu’s Wedding […]
The male-to-male escort industry is booming, servicing clients who are typically middle- aged, affluent, white – and most often married. Charl Blignaut spends time at a whorehouse In the quiet street of a leafy suburb in the east of Johannesburg not even the next-door neighbours know that the house next door is a brothel. Why […]
Mzilikazi wa Afrika A Northern Province tuberculosis patient who disappeared from his hospital bed was found dead near the doctors’ quarters on Sunday morning, with his scrotum removed and his penis skinned. Police suspect that someone working at the Mokopane hospital, near Potgietersrus, lured Malesela Joseph Tshege (52) out of the TB ward in the […]
Mail & Guardian reporter South Africa’s financial markets took a drubbing this week as the rand fell to an all-time low and the Reserve Bank raised its key lending rate by more than two percentage points to 18%. The rand dropped to R5,16 against the dollar on Monday after rumours in London and New York […]
Lesotho’s elections have been declared fair, but a host of inconsistencies points towards vote rigging, writes William Boot in Maseru The day before Lesotho’s general elections last Saturday, Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) leader Pakaditha Mosisili stuck his neck out to predict: “We will win by a landslide.” He said this at a time when […]
Alice Walker is a feminist icon and also a defiant individualist. Libby Brooks meets a woman at ease with herself, if not the world Alice Walker pads around her hotel suite like a fabulous cat. Just in from California and weary, she is not particularly friendly, but I would still like to touch her. The […]