Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg It is difficult to pin down exactly what it is that makes director Yael Farber’s production of Britpop theatre brat Mark Ravenhill’s 1996 debut, Shopping and Fucking, so powerful. Difficult because the production is consistently awesome. Difficult because, after seven years of being a theatre critic, I have all […]

If you’re looking for a new car, it’s a buyers’ market, writes Charlene Smith Buying a car is one of the most expensive investment decisions many of us make, but with car sales plummeting, now may be the time to bag a good deal. John Cuming, Delta Motor Corporation’s director of sales and marketing, says […]

The conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda is often characterised as mindless ethnic bloodletting. Mahmood Mamdani provides a far more complex background to the conflict No two conflicting groups in the Great Lakes region have a longer and more comprehensive history of intermarriage than do the Hutu and the Tutsi. Intermarriage between the Hutu […]

Wonder Hlongwa The offices of three southern Cape newspapers have been burnt to the ground in an apparent revenge attack for reporting on the activities of gangs in the Hangklip area. The offices of the Hangklip Herald, Hermanus Herald and Gansbaai Herald were set alight in the early hours of last Monday morning. A petrol […]

Shaun de Waal CD of the week The Bassline in Melville, Johannesburg, has proved itself to be one of the city’s most reliable jazz joints, perhaps even its best. Everyone who is anyone in South African jazz has played there, and this CD, Jazz at the Bassline (Sheer Sound), collects 12 works by this country’s […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Gangs have triumphed in Westbury – Johannesburg’s equivalent of the Cape Flats ganglands – after promises of big business and politicians have come to naught. In recent weeks four men have been slain in gun fights – an event familiar to this dirt-poor community which, for decades, has enjoyed the notoriety of having […]

Andy Duffy Psychiatric patients treated and released by Western Cape health authorities have killed seven people over the past 18 months, including two children, amid an apparent collapse in the system set up to monitor them. The former patients, all from the high- security forensic unit at Cape Town’s Valkenberg hospital, represent a small proportion […]

Charlene Smith The National Party continued its string of humiliating local government by-election defeats this week, polling a paltry 22 votes in the mixed coloured and African council ward of Bloekombos in the Western Cape. And an NP councillor, Bill Schibbe, who defected to the Democratic Party on Thursday said it was time for the […]

The response this week from state health officials to our story that some of their former psychiatric patients have been killing people is instructive. Valkenberg hospital, which treated and released the patients, says such tragedies in other countries prompt, at the very least, a full-blown commission of inquiry. Not so here. The Western Cape provincial […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Bafana Bafana coach Philippe Troussier is nothing if not unpredictable. While the media differed over which personnel he would deploy against Zambia at FNB Stadium on Wednesday night, there was consensus on a 3-5-2 formation. So what does the controversial “White Magician” do? He proves once again that he is le boss […]