Miles Keylock Live in Cape Town During the past two years close on 200 South African “rock” bands released CDs. Pretty staggering figures when you pause to think about it. What is perhaps more astonishing, is that not even 10% of these bands are heavy metal bands. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a local […]
Elizabeth Wurtzel First Person In late June, Time magazine ran a story illustrated with the faces of Susan B Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, pictured in grave black and white. Next to the likeness of this righteous triumvirate was a colour photograph of Calista Flockhart aka Ally McBeal, above the red-lettered, alarmist question: is […]
Chris Gordon The United Nations has appointed a new special representative to head Angola’s peace mission. Issa Diallo is to take up his post at the end of August, as the UN faces spreading conflict in central Africa. Diallo’s appointment, announced at a joint commission meeting last Friday, follows the death of his predecessor, Maitre […]
Ferial Haffajee A South African multinational has patented the potent part of dagga and is selling it locally. Elevat – a brand owned by Pharmacare – is being hailed as a wonder drug for its treatment of the symptoms of cancer, Aids, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. This exposes the contradictions in South Africa’s policy […]
Roger Southall A Second Look Your correspondent William Boot is being incautious in suggesting that Lesotho’s May election was rigged by the ruling Lesotho Congress of Democrats (LCD) (“Lesotho’s election farce”, August 7 to 13). A more careful look at the election is required. Preparations for the election began under the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) […]
Liese van der Watt On show in Johannesburg Barricaded Bryanston seems a fitting backdrop for the first South African exhibition of expatriate Philip Badenhorst, who has been living, working and teaching in Antwerp for the last 21 years. His is an unfamiliar aesthetic – European perhaps – in its detached refusal to engage the exterior […]
The Mail & Guardian has taken something of a battering at the hands of the legal system over the past couple of weeks. After winding ourselves up for the libel case with the KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General, Tim McNally, we were advised by senior counsel to “tender” for a settlement of R50 000, which McNally took. […]
Howard Barrell Leaders of agriculture and business joined forces to fight worsening crime this week – and to persuade desperate farmers and businessmen not to resort to unlawful protests against the government’s seeming inability to get to grips with the problem. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to prevent our members taking the law into their […]
of Ooze This is the first newspaper interview he’s given for 20 years. What’s Stephen King got to be afraid of? Peter Conrad reports To be Stephen King is a traumatic fate: his head serves as an incubator for the world’s bad dreams. His face – currently bare of the beard behind which he hibernates […]
What happens when a French philosopher decides to take on the truth commission? To find out, Chris Roper attended Jacques Derrida’s lecture on forgiveness at the University of the Western Cape `Pardon,” says the stylishly clad and devastatingly sexy Jacques Derrida. It is the first word of his lecture – one that will go on […]