CRICKET: Pat McDermott MUCH has been said about the brittleness of the South African top order. It has assumed the proportions of a national crisis in the bars where the followers of cricket dissect the manner in which the touring Australians have shown such disdain for the best this country has to offer. It is […]
JKL Walker THE FATAL ENGLISHMAN: THREE SHORT LIVES by Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, R57,95) AFTER the success of his Great War novel Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks has turned aside from fiction to present, in The Fatal Englishman, a biographical triptych of three young men of apparent brilliance and promise who met early deaths in mysterious and tragic […]
The latest SA/UK gospel choir collaboration is a sign of the rebirth of interest in local choral music. GWENANSELL looks at the state of songs of praise HIT parade trends may come and go, but South Africa’s love affair with gospel seems to go on forever. Its latest expression is an incandescent vocal collaboration between […]
Bridgette A Lacy THE SEASONS OF BEENTO BLACKBIRD by Akosua Busia (Hutchinson, R97,95) IMAGINE a man who is “a broad-shouldered six- foot-four silhouette headed across the tarmac like a panther on the prowl . Focused. Upright. Full of power.” Did I mention that this man spends winters with one wife on a Caribbean island and […]
New soapie The Burning Issue just doesn’t wash, says ANDREW WORSDALE WHY are South African sit-coms and soapies so strained and dreadful and boring? My belief is it’s because they try to serve as education and as drama, with teaching and issues always taking the upper hand. Apart from the critically acclaimed hit series Soul […]
HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on the controversial Section 13 clause and an outcry over control of state arts funding CULTURAL workers this week lashed out at the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) for trying to hijack the independence of the newly established National Arts Council (NAC), the non-governmental statutory body that holds the […]
Soul-jazz diva Erykah Badu is climbing the world’s charts and has been hailed as the new Billie Holliday. DAN GLAISTER takes in her British debut INCENSE, candles, an ethnic curio on the floor – the set suggests voodoo, but this is no voodoo show. Welcome to Baduizm, the precinct of Erykah Badu, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter […]
The winner of 1997’s first Grand Slam tournament became the youngest No 1 in the history of women’s tennis when she succeeded Steffi Graf TENNIS:Stephen Bierley THE man in the Lipton Championships courtesy car knew a lot about tennis. He eased himself back in his driving seat, squinted into the dazzling early-morning Florida sun and […]
RUGBY: Mick Cleary RESPECT is not a concept which the Afrikaner has traditionally handed out with any great generosity to his fellow men. It took the profound dignity of Nelson Mandela, not to mention many years of incarceration, finally to prick the nation’s conscience into doing the decent thing. The British Lions have chosen a […]
THEATRE: Julie Barker `THE struggle never made me famous.” These are words uttered by a gangster at the height of his career. This is Gomorrah!, a powerful new work directed by Pule Hlatshwayo, and conceived by the cast, all graduates of the Market Theatre Laboratory. Gomorrah! explores the inevitability of violence as a way of […]