As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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), […]

Janet Smith PROFESSOR EXPERIMENTO’S FRIGHTENING FORMULA by Janie Oosthuysen (Human & Rousseau, R24,95) Children who are already on their way to reading novels will love this unusual little drama, set in a scientific lab, where rats are infinitely more brave and clever than the humans who would experiment on them. It tells the tale of […]

What do you think? We invite our readers to respond to John Pilger’s analysis of South Africa. The best replies will each receive a free copy of his latest book, Hidden Agendas, published by Vintage. Fax your responses to (011) 403-1025 or e-mail [email protected]

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 […]

Michael Billington: London theatre I have measured out my life in productions of Uncle Vanya – two in particular, by Laurence Olivier and Peter Stein, will haunt me to my grave. Katie Mitchell’s RSC/Young Vic co-production may not be on quite the same exalted plane, but it remains a treasurable occasion, penetrating the memory for […]