Inga Latham On stage in Cape Town In the Coffee Lounge in Cape Town, comedian Chris McEvoy is warming up with Sczhoid before the Grahamstown run of his one-man show, Bitter. After the three flights of stairs up to the Top Floor Theatre, McEvoy is lucky any of us still have breath with which to […]

The most famous lover of all time spent his twilight years as a librarian in a little- known Czech town. Kate Connolly reports Macaroni, crayfish, and duck in marmalade sauce was on the menu at a strange little dinner in a dilapidated castle in northern Bohemia last week. The guests were as weirdly diverse as […]

Tangeni Amupadhi A high court decision to extend the bail of three Afrikaner youths found guilty last week of murdering and assaulting black people has increased racial tension in the divided Upington community. Blacks in the town have criticised the bail extension as further proof of the judiciary’s lenience towards whites. The court heard the […]

Adam Mars-Jones THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS McNULTY by Sebastian Barry (Picador, R110) Sebastian Barry’s new novel is so full of magnetising beauty that it all but harasses a reader into submission. You can try to protest, to say, “I’m a reader and you’re a book, can we not keep this on a professional basis?”, but […]

Charl Blignaut went to the 1998 Miss Soweto `beauty bash’ at the Standard Bank Arena and liked what he saw The tone of this year’s Miss Soweto pageant was made perfectly clear right at the outset of the event. Opening the proceedings in the Standard Bank Arena last Saturday was none other than local pop […]

South Africa’s economic fortune may once have been built on gold, but nowadays an ill-timed investment in the metal might just lead to economic ruin. Gold-board shares have recently become among the most volatile of choices, a victim of an erratic international gold price. But there are believers who claim there is money to be […]

Richard Williams LUSH LIFE: A BIOGRAPHY OF BILLY STRAYHORN by David Hajdu (Granta, R89,95) Jazz has produced several memorable threnodies – one thinks of John Lewis’s lament for Django Reinhardt or Charles Mingus’s salute to Lester Young – but none more affecting than Blood Count, recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1967, a few […]

These are the key women’s investment companies in South Africa: n Women’s Investment Portfolio This company is the mother of female-led investment companies. Last year it started a holding company to offer preferential shares to the female public. It expects to turn a profit by 2000. It has investments in financial services, the Bidvest group […]

Krisjan Lemmer The former head of the police forensic laboratory, General Lothar Neethling – whose dubious achievements include shutting down Max du Preez’s glorious rag, Vrye Weekblad, by suing them for libel over the suggestion he was a poisoner – was among those whom the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wanted to question this week about […]

Ferial Haffajee The controversy surrounding the top job in South African broadcasting continued this week, with indications that the SABC board could face charges of unfair labour practice. SABC deputy chief executive Govin Reddy, who did not get the position of chief executive, has levelled allegations of racism against the board. This week the board’s […]