Faces of 1996: We speak to the Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for theatre Thestre: Matthew Krouse CHEWING heavily on nicotine gum, Lara Foot Newton confesses to being born and bred in Pretoria. “And Pretoria is an identity of its own,” says the 28-year-old winner of the 1996 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for […]

Bill Gates has committed his vision of the future to paper and it will appear in shops around the world today. Bruce Cohen takes a look at Gates’ roadmap to the information LET me state my heresy upfront: I like Bill Gates. I think the founder and chairman of Microsoft is a pretty smart guy. […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser TWO outstanding soloists and an orchestra still inspired by Gerard Korsten’s recent visit marked the first two concerts conducted by Vladimir Simkine, the Russian conductor currently on the podium in front of the National Symphony First Tasmin Little gave a breathtakingly lyrical account of Beethoven’s violin concerto. Her articulation was always […]

With lucrative contracts on offer, the temptation is great for Springbok players to switch to rugby league, especially those who weren’t in the World Cup squad RUGBY:Jon Swift THE Jacques Olivier affair has had the effect of making the mantle of world champions start to fray at the edges. In the wake of the 24-14 […]

AND at the end of the week, does it really seem any less important than it did in the instant 1 000-megawatt surge of collective astonishment on Monday night? Absolutely not; indeed if anything, it seems more important rather than less. Re-viewing the interview with the Princess of Wales two things are clear. First, it […]

South African abolitionists just found an unlikely ally, reports David Beresford OPPONENTS of capital punishment have found a powerful new ally: the country’s police chief, George Fivaz, who has seen the light … not on the road to Damascus, but in Denmark. The possibility that capital punishment – outlawed by the Constitutional Court – will […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale AVI LERNER and Trevor Short – two producers who made junk over here in the heady days of tax- breaks and Hollyveld – have now teamed up with Martin Scorsese to produce an art movie. They claim it’s part of their plan to diversify their product from the usual Cyborg Cop I, […]

WHAT happens when Mandela goes? The concern underlying the question becomes even more acute when one considers his performance over the last week. As the president’s stature continues to grow, so does the likely vacuum when he finally and voluntarily bows out of the political arena. Mandela is deserving only of praise for the way […]

BALLET: Stanley Peskin MORE than a century after The Nutcracker was first conceived for the Maryinsky Theatre at St Petersburg as part of the Christmas festivities in 1892, it continues to hold the stage. Andr Prokovsky’s production for Pact Ballet takes its impetus not only from Lev Ivanov, the ballet’s original choreographer, but also from […]

Some of the irrational responses to crime could damage our new Bill of Rights, argues Etienne Mureinik MANY South Africans now live in dread of violent crime, and it is not just the awful number of daily victims that haunts them. It is also the gratuitousness with which petty thieves casually kill and cripple their […]