Brett Pyper The newmusic@rhodes series does not aim to present a Who’s Who of South African art music. Instead, it focuses on one specific vein within the work of composers from divergent traditions: music that somehow reflects the encounter of African and Western musical values in South Africa. This approach de-emphasises the substantial South African […]

The South African petroleum industry was thrown into confusion in March 1997 when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna threatened to “re-regulate the entire industry”. He accused multinationals operating in South Africa of maintaining a stranglehold on the domestic industry without contributing to black empowerment or the economy as a whole. Recently, black empowerment […]

The editor of Zimbabwe’s main daily newspaper, a nephew of President Robert Mugabe, collapsed in his office and died of a heart attack on Tuesday. Charles Chikerema (59) an avowed Stalinist who criticised white Zimbabweans through the state-controlled press, died after serving only nine weeks as the editor of the Herald newspaper. It was the […]

Andy Duffy A senior academic at the University of the Witwatersrand is poised to resign over his involvement in a publicly listed technology company. Professor Hanoch Neishlos, chair of the computer science department at Wits, and his wife own shares in the company that are currently worth more than R100-million. The company’s main product is […]

Charl Blignaut It’s something of an unusual relationship, but there you have it. Like it or not, the international actor, prince of protest theatre and executive director of Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, John Kani, has throughout the past decade forged a very particular partnership with groundbreaking turn-of-the- century Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It all started in […]

Andy Capostagno Tennis It’s just possible that you may have been lured into the belief that there is a tennis tournament going on in Johannesburg this week. Six of the finest players in women’s tennis are battling it out for $200 000 in prize money and you can witness all the action for as little […]

The discovery of vast stretches of water between the stars has raised new questions about the origins of life on Earth, writes Tim Radford European scientists, using an ultra-cold orbiting telescope, have discovered unimaginable volumes of water in the space between the stars. The discovery raises new questions about life elsewhere in the universe -and […]

Once a vibrant part of the Soweto arts scene, the Funda Centre has had to adapt. Swapna Prabhakaran finds out how It is a sad fact that Soweto’s Funda Centre is better known internationally than it is in Johannesburg. The once-famous centre for literacy and the arts has transformed in the Nineties to become a […]

Lynda Gledhill Sitting in a luxury hotel dressed in brightly coloured clothes, Ester Mujawayo does not exude the air of a woman whose life has been destroyed. But this Tutsi from Rwanda is one of the few survivors in her family of the genocide that gripped her country in 1994. For a month, Mujawayo, her […]