Angella Johnson The “general” who was given 1% of Virodene’s parent company for African National Congress “introductions work” claims he actually received the share as a gift from Ziggy and Olga Visser for helping them make contact with prominent black businesspeople. Documents used to attack the ANC this week for its alleged involvement in the […]
Mandy Collins Thankfully, the days when “living together” was considered a mortal sin are over. Today, many heterosexual couples choose not to get married, homosexual couples may not get married and many customary marriages are not recognised by South African law. All that adds up to quite a few couples who live within a committed, […]
Ferial Haffajee In your ear With radio booming, the number of independent production houses is growing to titillate the ears and provide quality local radio. One of them is Wola Nani, an Aids- support organisation that has also produced a series of programmes on different aspects of living positively with the HIV virus. Other non-governmental […]
Charl Blignaut: On stage in Johannesburg There’s a very cool moment in Ilse van Hemert’s Mallemeulwals when Sandra Prinsloo, playing a glamorous and world-weary leading lady in turn-of-the-century France, gazes lazily into space and proclaims, “Love does not exist.” It’s a point she gets to prove just moments later as she plunges into bed with […]
Mish Middelmann: REALITY BYTES So there are all these cool ways of creating digital content, from word processors through voice recognition to digital cameras. But what about the stuff you get on plain old paper? Scanners are the things that turn paper documents into digital form, and nowadays they go together with optical character recognition […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS Andr Wessels (not his real name) still remembers the time when Indians were kicked out of Pageview, an area to the west of Braamfontein station that was predominantly Indian at the time. He was jubilant, and so was everyone else he knew. They would shout “Gaan terug [go back], coolies!” as […]
Vatmaar, the Afrikaans novel by a man in his 70s which won the M-Net and the CNAprizes, recently elicited a heated auction among German publishers. The rights to a German translation were finally sold to Luchterhand, a literary house with a good reputation, for a high five-figure sum. Vatmaar has already been published Meulenhoff in […]
Adam Haupt The University of Cape Town’s Contemporary African Music and Arts Archive (Cama) got its African Alchemy project started with a workshop, which was facilitated by musician, producer and artist Brian Eno. The obvious connection to be made here is with the forthcoming visit of mega pop group U2’s Popmart tour – Eno produced […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi Divisions within the African National Congress’s top structures this week spared Gauteng MEC for Safety and Security Jessie Duarte her job for the time being, despite growing pressure on Premier Mathole Motshekga to sack her. Senior officials in the party are said to have been furious at Duarte’s decision this week to withdraw […]
The NGO sector moves poverty back to centre stage with a daring pre-election roadshow, reports Ferial Haffajee In Bloemfontein, the heart of South Africa, on March 17, the nation’s poor will begin to speak out. They will continue to do so for more than two months, speaking about overcrowded schools, cardboard homes and dwindling social […]