Keith Henderson Fire, fire and more fire would be an easy way to describe this year’s Rustlers Easter Festival. It became quite clear by the end of the four-day festival that tricks involving paraffin, chains, sticks and clubs with burning ends are in vogue, so to speak, as well as a healthy dose of juggling. […]
Bongani Siqoko The clinic at Elomoya village, north of KwaZulu-Natal, which was built by the community almost three years ago, is still standing in long grass, unstaffed and unequipped. This means that for people to get proper health care, they have to walk 36km to the nearest Ndlangubo clinic or 45km to Gezinsila. After three […]
Mathole Motshekga’s past has come under new scrutiny from the ANC, writes Stefaans Brummer The African National Congress is investigating claims that Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga spied for the apartheid government. An ANC commission of inquiry – appointed in February to investigate a string of allegations against Motshekga, primarily of financial irregularities – has now […]
Brenda Atkinson Excuse me, I’m about to gush. The object of this critical affirmation is a 500-page directory that will raise the excluded and chronically confused cultural majority in South Africa to the minority ranks (such as they are) of the cognoscenti. A big welcome to the South African Handbook on Arts and Culture for […]
Lucy Hannan in Garissa It has taken a Cabinet minister’s threat to resign to make the Kenyan government launch an inquiry into allegations ofEpolice torture and sexual humiliation during an operation against bandits in North-Eastern province. Maalim Mohammed, a staunch supporter of President Daniel arap Moi since 1983, produced video evidence of torture in his […]
What is the appeal of sitting in a kind of bar, staring into a computer screen?Swapna Prabhakaran investigated Internet cafs Looking for a lounge where they serve real coffee, where the music alternatively spins between kwaito and techno? Or would you rather sip sherry at a nice cosy cabaret? You can do all that and […]
Don Maclennan’s new poetry volume, Solstice, has won him two awards. He spoke to Denise Rack Louw `I dislike interviews, but I enjoy conversations,” award-winning poet Don Maclennan tells me with a twinkle. I am visiting Maclennan at his Grahamstown home to find out more about the writer and his work – including Solstice (Snailpress), […]
Andrew Worsdale Switzerland has more banks than dentists. This is one of the trivia I picked up a fortnight ago when I joined a group of fellow South African film-makers to attend the Black Movie Film Festival in Geneva. Strangely, most of the participants where white. I hauled myself there with my old staple Shot […]
Shaun de Waal: CDs of the week Someone of an older generation once told me he felt quite upset that so few younger people would ever fully appreciate the joys of Mozart. I’m afraid I’m one of them, but I feel the same way as he did when it comes to jazz,particularly its greatest practitioners […]
Bill Buford: GRAFFITI The literary news in New York has been of acquisitions. The most noteworthy, of course, is the acquisition of Random House by Bertelman’s. The Pierpont Morgan library has just been given a gift of rare “American literary properties” collected by Carter Burden, a New York businessman with an interest in the media […]