Phillip Kakaza Live music Someone has passed a buck to me – it seemed like it when I was assigned to cover the American blues muso, Ronnie Peterson show at the Blues Room. The message came like a razor-sharp command. As if a twentysomething lad knew much about blues music. The little bit of knowledge […]

Andy Duffy The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), which represents the majority of Muslims in the Western Cape, has called on the People Against Gangterism and Drugs (Pagad) to suspend all activities. The council, previously slated for not taking a firm and public lead against Pagad’s vigilante tactics, says the group’s militant approach has spun out […]

Anthony Egan SOWETO: A HISTORY by Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal (Maskew Miller Longman) THE SOWETO UPRISINGS: COUNTER-MEMORIES OF JUNE 1976 by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (Ravan) The city to the south-west of Johannesburg , Soweto, has had a short but significant history. It started largely as a settlement for migrant workers to the Witwatersrand, a […]

She’s a South African New Yorker whose first novel is set in the Oudtshoorn of caves and ostrich farms. Shaun de Waal meets Anne Landsman In Anne Landsman’s debut novel, The Devil’s Chimney (Jonathan Ball), the Cango Caves form the central, or perhaps one should say underlying, metaphor. Their chambers and lakes, stalactites and stalagmites […]

Andy Capostagno Golf The Scots have a saying: “If there’s nae wind there’s nae golf.” Think about that when the cream of the world’s players are struggling through the links of Royal Birkdale this week. You will hear many seasoned professionals complain that it makes the game a lottery. Nick Price said during practice: “It […]

Forget the business guru in a dark suit: today’s corporate motivators are trainers, modelled on the world of sport, writes Ian Wylie Sometimes they fall out, sometimes they get fired, but no one wins the soccer World Cup or Wimbledon without a coach. Every good athlete has a coach, helping them to break through barriers […]

Luke Harding Cg’ose Ntcox’o, an illiterate Botswanan artist, was delighted when British Airways (BA)bought one of her works. She promptly splashed out on seven cows, built herself a shack on the edge of the Kalahari desert, and gave the rest of the money to her many nomadic relatives. Last week, however, Ntcox’o was deeply unhappy […]

Chris Roper On stage in Cape Town The intersection between art and technology is a fruitful place to observe variance in the way art can be produced and consumed. This intersection normally takes place at the level of art forms such as music, narratives or performances. You certainly wouldn’t expect poetry, the old codger of […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon With what in the way of a gaudy extravaganza is South Africa planning to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium? There are only about 530 days left before the delight of living in the 20th century will become a thing of the past. As one of those who feels he […]

Irwin Manoim A printer is a machine which artfully lines up a bunch of microscopic dots on paper to produce elegant love letters, invoices, poems, bar charts and school projects. Most of these sheets of paper go straight from the print tray to the waste bin, while the author experiments with changing the margins or […]