Gwen Ansell: CD of the week Reedman and composer Henry Threadgill is a graduate of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, and his work with the bands Air and Very Very Circus married open arrangements and dense textures in a way which often subverted expectations – all-brass ensembles, no-bass ensembles, Jelly Roll Morton-meets-Ornette […]
Tim Radford in London Suddenly the moon has become precious real estate: a kind of off-planet investment. Twenty-five years since two astronauts from Apollo 17 dusted their hands off and climbed back into a lunar module, Nasa scientists had peered at data from an orbiting spacecraft and found water at the lunar poles. Now a […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS Six o’clock in the evening and there is no parking space left in the Old Edwardian Sports Club in Lower Houghton. Cars overflow outside the club’s gates on to Fourth Street, all the way to 11th Avenue. These are the premises of the Old Edwardian Society, prime real estate in this […]
Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele: RIGHT TO REPLY Your article, “Whatever happened to the dream of low-cost housing”, February 20 to 26, was sensational and alarmist. My office has been co-operating with the media in making sure that their information needs are met on time. There is nothing sinister about verifying statistics and maintaining their integrity before releasing […]
Margot Pienaar The Wild Coast spatial development initiative (SDI) is about more than just employment creation. It is also about creating the opportunity for local communities to become partners and co-owners of viable, multi-million-rand income-producing projects. Objectively, the Wild Coast SDI implies a reversal for the subsistence farmers and migrant labourers who take their labour […]
M-Net’s loud, irreverent youth music service Channel O could receive its biggest boost yet after ongoing but thus far disappointing negotiations with the SABC to take advantage of its free-to-air status. Channel O programming is said to be ready to headline the pay channel’s Open Time, which is changing its appearance radically from July. The […]
Belinda Beresford Sometimes it may seem that the government and taxpayers – not to mention accountants and lawyers – are all locked in a contest with the one side trying to avoid as much tax as possible and the other trying to collect it. For many people having a tax adviser is part of life […]
Mail & Guardian reporter An incident of ugly on-air sexism on the Afrikaans commercial radio station, Punt Geselsradio, has ended on a happy note. The manne at the station have agreed to write a gender policy and to take lessons from organisations that have offered to train them in gender sensitivity. “We subscribe to an […]
Ronald Suresh Roberts THE HOUSE GUN by Nadine Gordimer (David Philip, R99,95) PARADISE by Toni Morrison (Chatto & Windus, R110) ‘Little illegal niggers with guns and no home training need to be in jail,” says a black resident of a blacks-only town, in Toni Morrison’s Paradise. Conversely, in Nadine Gordimer’s The House Gun, young white […]
Gwen Ansell On Thursday March 19, the annual Windybrow Festival kicks off: the usual mix of dance, drama and music with a heavy emphasis on youth. As far as the music goes, opening night features singer Ringo Madlingozi, with material from his latest album Sondelani: an indication that this festival is following a slightly different […]