Chris Roper South African CD of the week The first words that the gravelly-voiced Arno Carstens croons on the opening track of The Springbok Nude Girls’ new CD, Omnisofa (Sony Music), are “we’re going to grow you up slowly”. It wouldn’t be too fanciful to imagine this as referring to the relationship between the band […]

Mike Jensen With the increasing recognition of the importance of the Internet in accelerating development, a number of recent initiatives have improved the prospects for wider access to information and communication networks in Africa. One event which has helped to accelerate connectivity in Africa was the Addis Symposium on Telematics for Development in April 1995. […]

Catherine Knox Teenagers as young as 13 and 14 were treated for drug overdoses at last weekend’s annual Splashy Fen music festival, near Underberg, in KwaZulu-Natal. Dr Grant Lindsay, who has been providing emergency services at the festival for the past seven years, said he treated seven to 10 people a night for overdoses or […]

Andy Capostagno John Robbie is fond of saying, “There are only two kinds of people in the world. The Irish and people who wish they were Irish”. I found myself pondering those words while watching Catriona McKiernan burst from the pack, chase the leaders, reel them in and finally trot home in glorious isolation to […]

Krisjan Lemmer The man who gets this year’s Groot Marico public conscience award is Aboobaker Ismail. This week he went further than any other African National Congress official in owning up to responsibility for some of the horrors perpetrated by the “good guys” in the liberation struggle. Appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in […]

So what if the illusionist does trick us? Isn’t that what we want? Martyn Bedford says we must let magic keep its mystique So you’re on your way out of the concert hall, the music of one of the world’s great pianists still reverberating in your ears when someone sidles up alongside you like a […]

Charlene Smith Outside a Johannesburg court, a policeman and private investigators compare notes before testifying at a trial of a major criminal syndicate. The policeman’s original notes came from the private investigators, who in turn were contracted by major medical aid firms to investigate millions of rands worth of fraud. As soon as they came […]

Alex Sudheim was pleasantly surprised by musical developments at this year’s Splashy Fen festival For the first time in the nine- year history of the music festival, Splashy Fen rocked. Resolutely folk-oriented until now, the event took on a radically enhanced contemporary element this year with the inclusion of bands that would have previously been […]

David Bennun Foreign CD of the week `It is,” observed one visitor to my flat, “a bit bloody gloomy, isn’t it?” My visitor was referring to Massive Attack’s new CD, Mezzanine (Virgin), an album so dark that it seems to soak up the light in the room like a miniature black hole. It was playing […]

Mungo Soggot Professor Andr Thomashausen has accused the probe into Mathole Motshekga of violating the Constitution by banning the Gauteng premier from seeing him. He has also challenged the African National Congress to release tapes of his interview with the commission of inquiry into Motshekga. The commission recommended that Motshekga sever all ties with Thomashausen, […]