Stefaans Brmmer Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga shares a business empire with an apartheid-era military intelligence agent who was also a key backer in Motshekga’s bitterly contested campaign last year for the provincial throne. Abel Rudman’s military intelligence cover was blown in 1991 when the then Weekly Mail revealed that an anti-African National Congress newspaper he […]
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 […]
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 […]
Chris Roper: On show in Cape Town The Association for Visual Arts, or AVA as it’s more popularly known, has got three distinct exhibition spaces on its premises in the trendy Church Street Mall. Their habit of showing three different exhibitions in the respective spaces means that the viewer is often forcibly made aware of […]
The new Afrikaans TV thriller Die Vierde Kabinet gives Gys de Villiers another leading role. Janet Smith discovers fame hasn’t necessarily meant fortune Two old Cessnas, a panel van and a Kombi make up the inventory of Logistic Inc, a company fictionalised into unsuspecting political life by Afrikaans TV thriller maestro Jan Scholtz in his […]
The University of Pretoria’s celebrated Van Tilburg collection may have been stolen from Dutch Jews, writes Bart Luirink In 1951 Jacob van Tilburg, a Dutch art collector, managed to transfer 91 cases with valuable art pieces to South Africa – a remarkable effort for somebody who, three years earlier, had been sentenced for collaboration with […]
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 […]
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 […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby The Super 12 is heading inexorably towards a conclusion and, while the whole country may be looking for scapegoats to explain the dismal efforts of South Africa’s regional selections, the whole country doesn’t have to find a solution. Nick Mallett does. But given the weight upon his coat-hanger shoulders, the big man […]
They’re a dance band who don’t dance, recording stars who rarely record. Yet their sound is everywhere, writes Lindsay Baker What with one thing and another, Massive Attack have taken their time. Their three albums to date have taken as long to appear as The Beatles’ entire recording career. But, gradually and quietly, their sound […]