While a wave of optimism has been surging throuhg the local film industry, hot on the heels of <i>Yesterday</i> and <i>U-Carmen eKhayelitsha</i>, the strong rand has tripped up SA’s one-stop-shop filmmaking strategy, writes Kenneth Kaplan.
"I recorded the album in Xhosa, not to show off the fact that I could, I did it for me to feel complete," says celebrated singer Simphiwe Dana. Along with Cesaria Evora, she chooses to sing in her home language — and is being acknowledged for it, writes Nadia Neophytou.
While maintaining its recipe of blending top-flight international acts with local living legends and emerging artists, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has a new identity, but celebrates old sounds, writes Julian Jonker.
Luli Callinicos’s biography on Oliver Tambo fills a much-needed void in the examinations of the lives of South Africa’s struggle icons.
Anthony Egan reviews <i>Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains</i>.
Maggots are squirming from the old man’s foot, but he is just laughing at the ceiling. The latest patient to enter one of Bulawayo’s main hospitals has suspected beri-beri, a disease caused by vitamin deficiency. He is also mentally ill, and seems undisturbed at the prospect of having his foot amputated due to the gangrene that has set in. But you can’t even get a Band-Aid these days from a system that was once top grade.
As the deadline for mining conversion rights falls due at the end of April, the Department of Minerals and Energy finds itself with an unintended problem in the form of alluvial diamond diggers in Kimberley in the Northern Cape. The diggers say the government is strangling their livelihoods with mining reform initiatives that look good on paper but are out of touch with reality.
Amnesty International (AI), the British-based human rights watchdog, has accused Kenyan authorities of violating the rights of terror suspects in the East African country — and called for an immediate end to these alleged abuses. "We do not support terrorism. However, measures to prevent terrorism can only be effective if they also guarantee and protect human rights," said a researcher on Kenyan issues for AI.
Have you ever stopped to think how many minutes a day you are in contact with no textiles, the fabric of your sofa, bed linen, towels, clothing? Or wondered how these things are produced, and what happens to them when they are discarded? The Cleaner Textile Production Project is quickly addressing the areas of greatest negative impacts, working with cotton growers and textile manufacturers.
Industry-driven policing through a proposed Peat Users’ Association is being mooted to ensure responsible peat mining and use in South Africa. Peat is a type of wetland soil that is high in organic content. Significantly, the vast mires (peat-forming wetlands) of the northern hemisphere hold about a third of the world’s soil carbon. But peat mining is alsp destroying precious wetlands and water resources.
”Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue” is how University of Namibia professor of political studies Bill Lindeke described Namibia’s new government after Hifikepunye Pohamba replaced Sam Nujoma as state president on Monday. A Namibian current affairs magazine has dubbed Pohamba the ”Old Man — Mark II” to show how little things were likely to change.