Marianne Merten In December 1986 Benjamin Olifant was on his way to visit his mother when Klerksdorp police arrested him for “causing unrest”. He was shot dead in a police cell. Elsie Olifant received interim reparations of R2000. More than 30 months after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommended various forms of reparations for […]
Alec Hogg Boardroom talk AME is set for better days. The JSE-listed penny stock owns 15% of the new undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Champion and the right to promote his first title defence. A $250 000 punt on American heavyweight boxer Hasim Rahman turned to gold early on Sunday for African Media Entertainment (AME). In […]
John Stremlau a second look Twenty years after the first nuclear explosion Albert Einstein issued his famous lament about politics falling behind physics. “The unleashed power of the atom,” he warned, “has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.” Africa’s contributions to the nuclear age were poignant but […]
Shaun de Waal CD OFTHEWEEK Clint Mansell’s score for the film Requiem for a Dream (Nonesuch) contributed in no small measure to the devastating impact of that nerveshredding tale of addiction. It works very well, even separated from the movie, employing a mode somewhere between Philip Glass and Bernard Hermann, with some very original twists. […]
Peter van der Merwe John Platter South African Wine Guide 2001 edited by Phillip van Zyl (Andrew McDowall) Wines and Vineyards of South Africa by Wendy Toerien (Struik) The Sunday Telegraph Good Wine Guide 2001 by Robert Joseph (Dorling Kindersley) Wine snobbery is a puzzling phenomenon, to say the least. Let’s face it, few can […]
Johannesburg architects Jeremy Rose and Phill Mashabane recently won the Robben Island architectural competition Yvette Gresl In postapartheid South Africa Robben Island has taken on a dual significance. It is a contradictory symbol of extreme political subjugation and, in the words of Ahmed Kathrada, the “triumph of the human spirit”. Nelson Mandela, as a symbol […]
Melvyn Minnaar In the past those who fancied themselves in the frontline of the vintage would have been sipping brandnew “nouveau” wines with their autumn braais right now. Bubbling with fresh fruit and nifty modern winemaking methods ?this fad of getting new wine out under the new vintage label has mercifully?faded around here. In a […]
While England run free, Romania struggle against all odds to keep rugby alive Eddie Butler The last time I saw Florica Murariu was one lunchtime in Bucharest. He was on television. Not that he was doing anything. One of the finest forwards of his generation, one of the key players in the Romanian side that […]
Kathryn Smith African Window (National Cultural History Museum), 149 Visagie Street, Pretoria. Gordon Froud’s Plastic by Nature, a sculptural installation of objects constructed from plastic cutlery and crockery, is currently on view. Ends May 26. Also on view are paintings and drawings of the Namibian landscape by Beeuven Gerrytz. Ends April 29. Pierneef: Master of […]
Piers Pigou CROSSFIRE Although last week’s decision by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty committee to grant Robert McBride and five others amnesty for the bombing of the Why Not and Magoos beachfront bars in Durban on June 14 1986, which resulted in three dead and more than 70 injured, was perhaps predictable, it […]