Jan Taljaard THE first salvoes in the battle for the rightwing vote in November’s local government elections have been fired by two big rightwing guns, Ferdi Hartzenberg and Constand Viljoen. Competing against the rain, rugby and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the capital last week, neither the Freedom Front’s (FF) Viljoen nor Conservative Party (CP) leader […]

Director Gregory Doran has produced a travesty of=20 Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy in his attempt to root the=20 play in South African militarism, argues Digby Ricci=20 FIRST acted and printed in 1594, Titus Andronicus is=20 regarded as Shakespeare’s earliest and bloodiest=20 tragedy, and, although immensely popular with=20 Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, it has subsequently=20 been savaged […]

The Mandela daughters have sided firmly with their mother after her sacking, writes Justin Pearce Winnie Mandela may have suffered the most devastating defeat of her political career this week. Yet she has won the battle for the loyalty of the Mandela children, leaving her estranged husband — one of the world’s best-loved national leaders […]

Beninoise artist Romuald Hazoume makes traditional=20 religious masks — out of discarded objects. ‘I’m just=20 sending back the rubbish sent from Europe to Africa,’ he=20 told Tony Karon=20 ROMUALD HAZOUME probably turned more heads than any=20 other artist visiting the Johannesburg Biennale. =20 The young Beninoise exhibited a series of traditional=20 religious masks crafted from […]

Tara Turkington=20 I Want to Tell You by OJ Simpson=20 (Little, Brown, R80,99)=20 Orenthal James Simpson, ex-American football star,=20 congenial endorser of Hertz Rent-a-Car and mediocre=20 actor, ousted the United States’ afternoon TV soaps by=20 leading Los Angeles police on a televised car chase in=20 June last year. =20 Now on trial for the murders […]

RAVAN, one of the stalwart anti-apartheid publishers of=20 the dark years of South Africa’s history, have started a=20 new series of titles called the Ravan Writers Series.=20 It was Ravan that first published JM Coetzee; that=20 published Mongane Wally Serote’s first (and thus far=20 only) novel. Many of their books were banned by the=20 white […]

THE Norgaard principles are named after Carl Aage Norgaard, a Danish national and president of the European Commission on Human Rights, who was asked at the time of the Namibian settlement to frame guidelines defining the concept of a political prisoner. For a crime to be deemed a political offence, he stipulated the following should […]

THE Restitution of Land Rights Act passed through parliament in November last year. It allows for the creation of a Land Claims Court and a five-member commission to hear claims by groups who suffered at the hands of apartheid forced removals. The commission, which has already been appointed, has regional offices in each of the […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser=20 GAUTENG audiences were presented with two of the=20 centrepieces of the classical religious repertoire=20 recently. Unfortunately, neither performance was an=20 unqualified success.=20 The Standard Bank Arena was packed with an audience=20 eager to hear Yehudi Menuhin conduct Handel’s Messiah.=20 He brought with him the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and=20 three soloists. They […]

The Markets=20 Jacques Magliolo=20 Stockbrokers are slow to accept change and nothing=20 upsets them more than when their old boys’ club is=20 interfered with. =20 Now, only seven months after being forced to allow=20 institutions to become corporate members of the=20 exchange, the realisation that they have no choice and=20 no way out is finally […]