Anton Marshall On stage in Cape Town It’s a long drive out to the Old Barn. Nice angle for a story, I think, to talk about the proverbial long road for theatre in South Africa. Particularly for this group called the Barnstormers. I’ve never seen that name at any of the major theatre venues before, […]

Can the Dalai Lama enlighten Western science, asks Michael Brooks As the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is accustomed to seeking enlightenment over deep philosophical issues. Recently, however, he had a new experience to contemplate as he watched a demonstration of the bizarre world of quantum physics. Anton Zeilinger, professor of experimental […]

As one of South Africa’s major outsider artists faces the loss of his unique Clarens homestead, Matthew Krouse and Alex Dodd journey to the source of a town’s painful conflict A Kafkaesque man in a black suit and tie flees across a surreal red landscape populated by creatures that could come from land or sea, […]

Howard Barrell The South African Communist Party leadership has called for a special meeting next week with Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and other top African National Congress officials to try to resolve the crisis in relations between the two organisations. The SACP wants the talks to take place before an ANC national executive committee meeting […]

interdict’ Ferial Haffajee All that Thembi Zikhali needed to enforce her interdict was proof that it existed. Because it is a court order, police are compelled to enforce it. “Police have no discretion,” says lawyer Joanne Fedler of the legal advocacy trust, Tshwaranang. The domestic violence Bill, a watershed piece of draft legislation, could curb […]

Justin Arenstein The Mpumalanga government has ordered a new investigation into the Motheo housing scandal after it expressed concern at the lack of financial controls in the national Department of Housing. Mpumalanga public accounts chair Hein Mentz said this week Parliament has been requested to address a perceived absence of checks and balances. Confirming that […]

Mark Coetzee On show in Cape Town The art forms traditionally relegated to women and the manner in which these are produced have undergone radical change over the last decade. Judy Chicago with her The Dinner Party once and for all destroyed a categorization based on production associated to gender, and highlighted that the visual […]

Bobby Peek The survival of the constitutional right to a healthy environment depends on the outcome of an unprecedented battle raging through almost every ministry and department of the government. The executive branch is debating the fate of the draft National Environmental Management Bill. Will the Bill vindicate the constitutional right to “an environment that […]

Linking bourses from all over the world could cause a financial crash worse than ever before, warn Alex Brummer and Jill Treanor The next stock market crash could be so sudden and so devastating that it would dwarf those of October 1929 and 1987, and all the policy makers and regulators in the world will […]

Robert McBride has been nominated to stand in next year’s elections, reports Wally Mbhele Detained foreign affairs official Robert McBride has emerged as one of the frontrunners in the race for African National Congress parliamentary seats in next year’s general election. For a candidate to qualify for election, the nominee must win the support of […]