As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]

Bongani Siqoko The clinic at Elomoya village, north of KwaZulu-Natal, which was built by the community almost three years ago, is still standing in long grass, unstaffed and unequipped. This means that for people to get proper health care, they have to walk 36km to the nearest Ndlangubo clinic or 45km to Gezinsila. After three […]

Lucy Hannan in Garissa It has taken a Cabinet minister’s threat to resign to make the Kenyan government launch an inquiry into allegations ofEpolice torture and sexual humiliation during an operation against bandits in North-Eastern province. Maalim Mohammed, a staunch supporter of President Daniel arap Moi since 1983, produced video evidence of torture in his […]

Brenda Atkinson Excuse me, I’m about to gush. The object of this critical affirmation is a 500-page directory that will raise the excluded and chronically confused cultural majority in South Africa to the minority ranks (such as they are) of the cognoscenti. A big welcome to the South African Handbook on Arts and Culture for […]

Shaun de Waal: CDs of the week Someone of an older generation once told me he felt quite upset that so few younger people would ever fully appreciate the joys of Mozart. I’m afraid I’m one of them, but I feel the same way as he did when it comes to jazz,particularly its greatest practitioners […]

Bill Buford: GRAFFITI The literary news in New York has been of acquisitions. The most noteworthy, of course, is the acquisition of Random House by Bertelman’s. The Pierpont Morgan library has just been given a gift of rare “American literary properties” collected by Carter Burden, a New York businessman with an interest in the media […]

Don Maclennan’s new poetry volume, Solstice, has won him two awards. He spoke to Denise Rack Louw `I dislike interviews, but I enjoy conversations,” award-winning poet Don Maclennan tells me with a twinkle. I am visiting Maclennan at his Grahamstown home to find out more about the writer and his work – including Solstice (Snailpress), […]

Charlene Smith Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, flying ducks and cheaply made chintzy porcelain with transfer printing are among the hottest items selling at antique dealers now. And while your mother or grandmother may have paid a few bob for them in the Fifties, they are now selling for thousands. Kitsch rules. Royal Winton, described by […]

WEDNESDAY, 11.30AM: PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela has been warned by a traditional healer that his ancestors may be upset after he was attacked by a swarm of bees at his ancestral home in Qunu, Transkei, on Saturday. According to presidential aide Parks Mankahlana, Mandela was stepping out of a bath at his Qunu residence when a […]