Those who still could cheered and danced and grinned yesterday as white helicopters delivered peacekeepers to Liberia, the vanguard of a force which is supposed to end one of Africa’s most savage civil wars.
The "worst excesses" of Nazism and communism? That type of throwaway comparison with apartheid is becoming all too prevalent in a world that is beginning to forget about the true horrors of those systems.
With a disturbing mix of potency and pathos, Ethiopia has again stuck out the begging bowl. The euphemistically labelled Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) said this week that about 12,5-million Ethiopians now need foreign food aid to survive.
Cartoons, DVD piracy, angry right-wing pixies and the future of the VCR all come under Fraser’s scalpel this week.
Exciting new South African feature films star at the festival, backing 2003’s Standard Bank Young Artist award-winner <b>Dumisani Phakhati’s</b> major retrospective. This is only the third time in the long history of the awards that one has gone to a filmmaker.
Ranging from post avant-garde video installations to the figurative oils of an Eastern Cape Old Master, the exhibitions for Festival 2003 use different visual languages to articulate similar preoccupations with identity and belonging.
Something for everyone, is the mission statement of a programme designed as a total experience for the music-lover.
The National Arts Festival has attracted two additional sponsors, it announced last week. The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF) has committed a R10,5-million sponsorship to be paid over three years.
Eleven new and recent plays, all written by Southern Africans, feature on the theatre programme.
"Home at last and proud to be South African", says the programme of the 2003 National Arts Festival, which runs from 27 June to 5 July 2003 in Grahamstown, heart of the Eastern Cape.