Anthony Egan LAST DAYS IN CLOUD CUCKOOLAND: DISPATCHES FROM WHITE AFRICA by Graham Boynton (Jonathan Ball, R99,95) This book is hard to categorise. Its title makes it sounds like journalism; parts of it read like an attempt to understand the democratic transition in South Africa. Much of it is reminscences of a childhood in what […]
People used to go to there just to collect the postmark, but now art dealers go to plunder the region’s priceless heritage, reports Alex Duval Smith ‘The trouble with Timbuktu,” says Mohamed Galla Dicko, “is that most people think it does not really exist. The world behaves as though it were just a mythical place.” […]
Janet Smith Since Ordinary People revolutionised the South African TV documentary in the early 1990s – and, indeed, the way the SABC’s current-affairs producers approached their subject after that – Mail & Guardian Television has set a standard for all other independent film-makers to follow. Its most innovative work to date, the award-winning Ghetto Diaries, […]
Andrew Muchineripi : Soccer National soccer coach Philippe Troussier spent this month shifting through the local and foreign-based talent available to him and now has a list of 30 World Cup hopefuls. One of the most eagerly awaited national squads since the birth of Bafana Bafana is scheduled to be named late next week for […]
US Martin Kettle Organisers of marathons and long-distance road races in the United States are barring or limiting entrants from Kenya – the most frequent winners – and offering higher prizes to American competitors. The move is overtly anti-African and, in many eyes, racist. The prestigious Bolder Boulder race in Colorado has just restricted Kenyan […]
Andy Capostagno : Cricket First of all, the apologies. Last week I suggested that the national selectors were myopic baboons who could not differentiate a class off-spinner from a kicked in car door. I also managed to retire Brian McMillan somewhat prematurely. My only excuse is that newspaper deadlines coincide with important announcements about as […]
John Pilger : CROSSFIRE In his fine book, The Mind of South Africa, Allister Sparks wrote: “South Africa has the widest gap between rich and poor of any country in the world for which data are available. Eighty-seven per cent of its land and 95% of its industrial holdings are in white hands. That degree […]
Shopping and Fucking is one of the most controversial scripts to be staged in South Africa. Charl Blignaut sits in on a rehearsal The moment I walk in I can feel the energy in the rehearsal room change, becoming slightly flustered. Five faces turn and look up at me from the floor where they are […]
Alexandra residents take the World Bank to task over plans to expand the Lesotho Highlands Water Project We are a group of low-income residents of Alexandra township, near Sandton. We have filed a formal protest at the World Bank Inspection Panel – the equivalent of its auditor general – against the expansion of the Lesotho […]
A South African cvompany has been implicated in illegal leopard trade, write John Grobler and Fiona Macleod Delegates from an international conservation agency meeting in Namibia for the past two weeks were shocked when, walking out of a popular bar in Windhoek last Thursday (April 23), they encountered a group of drunken men taunting three […]