John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF Politics is funny. Innuendo is even funnier. Innuendo brought into the service of politics is funny as hell. A lot of people who didn’t know they were in the middle of a game of political innuendo were brought to their knees and died, not realising that it was all […]

David Jays SMILE PLEASE by Jonathan Keates (Chatto & Windus) Adam, the central character in Smile Please, has a favourite gay sleazepit where you can take a break from the business of grapple and groan to “discuss early Antonioni or the Shostakovich cello sonata”. As in Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White, Jonathan Keates’s novel ripples […]

Michelle Matthews ‘Though celebrating the strides that women have made in the dance scene, this is no patronising event,” assure Sleaze Syndicate regarding its Chicks with Decks party. The pejorative is probably less disturbing than the pun, which insinuates that dicks and decks are the natural order. Unfortunately, the perception is valid, with the Cape […]

Luvuyo Kakaza CDs OFTHEWEEK In 1998, BMG Africa seemed to have grovelled hard in the dustbins of the ghetto in search of new talent. Every Wednesday at Johannesburg’s dancehall, 206 in Orange Grove, BMG hosted a musical showcase with a funky name: Jozi Vibes:Vibes 2 Smoke Ya. The fruitful results have been the release of […]

Alex Sudheim LIFESTYLE Leaving Durban for a cruise down the South Coast is like sliding into a daydream on a warm weekend afternoon – drowsily hovering on the fuzzy threshold of the land of Nod, absently aware of the world going pleasantly blurry and vague. As you roll through the green hills with the sea […]

Carolize Jansen There have been 176E069 cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) in the United Kingdom up to the end of last year. The consumption of BSE-infected meat is widely accepted as the cause of a strain of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), a human brain condition. There have been sporadic outbreaks […]

Brenda Atkinson REVIEW OFTHEWEEK Just three months after finding a home and willing financial midwives, Johannesburg’s inaugural urban culturefest Artichoke got off to an uneven but promising start on Saturday April 8 at the Sandton Civic Gallery. The quarterly cultural event – initiated by dancer/performer Jeannette Ginslov and organised by herself, Kathryn Smith and Bie […]

Sarah Bullen Selling unit trusts and selling chocolate differs only in the product. In both instances there is a product and a company that will make money when the product is purchased. In both instances the product is aggressively marketed to the consumer. And in both instances, buying the product will give the consumer a […]

Shaun de Waal THE ABOMINATION by Paul Golding (Picador) ‘High summer in a sweltering London club, and I’m getting into my drunken stride after midnight, rubbing sweat with the shoulders that pass by, and thinking vaguely about another drink, or about cruising the pissoirs, or about peeling off my vest and closing my eyes and […]

The second-leg match against Lesotho gives coach Trott Moloto a rare chance to experiment with his squad Andrew Muchineripi It might seem odd to suggest Bafana Bafana coach Trott Moloto faces a difficult mission on Saturday, given that South Africa are two goals ahead of Lesotho and have home advantage entering the second leg of […]