Alex Dodd Even a telephone conversation with gifted storyteller Antoinette Pienaar leaves you feeling like your blood’s flowing at a different pace through your veins. I’m in an office in the metropolis and she’s miles away on a farm drenched in winter sunlight, yet when we’ve finished speaking my heart is somehow beating at a […]
Community theatre is alive and well, and generating debate. Phillip Kakaza looks at two recent examples `South African theatre is floating on the waves of political change,” observes Johnny Loate, whose play, Cabbages and Bullets, 1998 winner of the Windybrow Arts Festival FNB Vita Award, is now at the Windybrow. “Protest theatre was based on […]
Africa David Shapshak A new generation of low-orbit communications satellites could be the boost African telecommunications is looking for. While South Africa’s fledgling techno- enthusiastic population has embraced cellular telephony, it has not established much else on the continent. However, satellite companies are expecting Africa to hop directly to satellite use. Communication by satellite has […]
Pennywhistle master Big Voice Jack Lerole played on the streets of Alexandra township in the Fifties. Today he’s a star in New York. Peter Makurube takes a cruise down memory lane `Midway through the Dave Matthews Band’s sellout show at Giants Stadium [New Jersey],” writes Leita Tayler of Newsday, “the group brought a South African […]
Ground control of computers is child’s play when it comes to the capabilities of satellite constellations, reports Bill O’Neill Microsoft dominates the world of personal computers and, whatever the result of current action by the United States Justice Department, looks set to determine the future of the Internet, too. For Bill Gates, the company’s boss, […]
Sydney Mathibe South Africa’s witch doctors have learned the power of advertising. A cursory look at the classified sections of newspapers reveals a kaleidoscope of attention- grabbing advertisements aimed at the superstitious and the millions of dedicated muti-users. The ads urge readers to send money, and promote dubious potions, herbal and chemical mixtures and powders […]
Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD What is a thirtysomething single girl to do when she needs an escort and all her eligible male friends are out of town? Well, you could always try the personal columns, teased a colleague. She may have been joking, but images of a sexy Richard Gere wiggling his tight […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi A new row among senior managers has hit the SABC following recent appointments and new vacancies created in the corporation’s radio news section. The radio battle comes after the former head of the division and now deputy chief executive Govin Reddy launched a public challenge against the appointment of the Reverend Hawu Mbatha […]
Chris Gordon As increasing Unita military activity is reported across Angola, the United Nations has imposed a fresh set of conditional sanctions on Angola’s intransigent rebel movement, in what is now a bid to avert serious conflict. These sanctions will come into force on June 25 if Unita does not surrender its headquarter towns and […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE I signed on to a cause a few weeks ago: a crusade for rational thinking about technology and its role in human affairs. Oddly and amazingly, just that statement alone has proven controversial. For those who see me as a pro- technology Utopian, or who are devoutly pro-technology themselves, it sounds like […]