Lorraine Pace While out walking his dog one summer’s day John Payne met an angel. “It was an ethereal bright golden image, a bit like a shadow embossed on air,” says Payne of his encounter. “The angel was very tall, about 3m, and while no words were spoken I heard a message: ‘You are loved.’ […]

Andy Capostagno: Rugby I am reminded of the story of the man who made his own wine. When the vintage had been trampled and bottled he threw a dinner party for the chosen few to sample his pride and joy. After a few sips his oldest and dearest friend said, “So you grew the elderberries […]

Felicity Wood Censorship is alive and well in the Eastern Cape, as Hogsback artist Elaine Matthews recently discovered when she submitted her painting, The Sacred Marriage, to an exhibition in the Cuyler Street Gallery in Port Elizabeth. The painting features an angel and a woman making love in a field of flowers. Matthews states that […]

David Beresford A LONG NIGHT’S DAMAGE: WORKING FOR THE APARTHEID STATE by Eugene de Kock as told to Jeremy Gordin (Contra Press, R89,95) The temptation is to recommend this book as required reading in South Africa’s schools, offering as it does an awful warning to future generations as to the consequences when society allows the […]

Stephen GrayUnspoilt places Borakalalo means (in Setswana) the “relaxing-place”, and it encompasses what previously was known by red-faced fisherfolk as the Klipvoor resort. Boetie with his latest bait still wades out through the reeds to reel in a gasping silver, yellow-streaked common carp, with scales like rand coins – at his own risk these days, […]

Martin Scorsese’s film Kundun is one of several new Hollywood movies on Tibet, writes Ed Douglas Long ago, in a land far, far away, a gentle people who believed in the spiritual force that joins us with everything else in the universe was overrun by an evil empire that believed in nothing beyond the material […]

Gavin Evans Boxing The idea of girding his ancient loins to beat up over-hyped young Englishmen is one that has long given pleasure to Benoni’s toughest, wiliest and prettiest granddad. The 42-year-old Thulane “Sugarboy” Malinga (he finds no offence in the boy bit) is seen as a bit of a fluke on this island, despite […]

Who is James Bond, the gunman in a tux? And why do we love him so? As the latest Bond movie opens in South Africa, Peter Conrad considers a 20th-century icon The image is contradictory. A man in a tuxedo tilts a gun; his arrogant smirk indicates that he is ready to use it. But […]

Suzy Bell: In your ear Community radio sings through the green hills of KwaZulu-Natal in a variety of voices from romantic, Bollywood bhangra duets to Shiyane Ngcobo’s masterly Maskanda music. Thanks to the Independent Broadcasting Authority, there are now five new community radio stations in the province, with each station snatching their niche in the […]