Aids myths? Myths, quasi-myths and questions about Aids abound. Donald McNeil Jnr attempts to demystify the epidemic in Southern Africa Donald G McNeil Jnr Despite its size, South Africa is number one in the world in several fields: rugby, cricket, tuberculosis and Aids. One hears too little about the last two. In 1990, a New […]
According to a recent study, the rape homicide rate in Cape Town is 12 times higher than in the United States. Charlene Smith reports In the photograph is a beautiful young woman sitting with her boyfriend. It is a 21st-birthday photograph. Six years before she was raped so violently with a sharp object in her […]
The winner of the Lillian Hellman/Dashiell Hammet award is not a standard academic, reports Mercedes Sayagues Judged on her writings alone, Dr Patricia McFadden appears to be an African Valkyrie in metal breast-plates, who sees the world through rigid prisms of gender and race. But when you meet her, she is a warm woman with […]
John Matshikiza With the Lid Off Response to the saga of my looted home has been huge. Many people have recounted similar misfortunes; most have been amused and appalled at the same time (it is like being in the middle of a horror movie, where the extremity of the situation makes you burst out into […]
You write a novel, the proof copies get passed around, panic sets in. Will they like it? Is it well enough written? Did I do justice to the characters? You wait to hear the cut and thrust of intellectual argument spearing down your literary faults. But no, what I got instead was quiet corner confessions […]
In The Prophet, Brett Bailey boldly takes on one the most enigmatic figures in Xhosa history, writes John Matshikiza Six weeks before the play was due to premier at Grahamstown, Brett Bailey had his laptop computer stolen from his makeshift office in Port St Johns, where he was rehearsing with his group, Third World Bunfight. […]
South Africa’s second democratic election saw the virtual extinction of the party that invented apartheid, writes Howard Barrell The African National Congress scored an emphatic victory at the polls this week, soaring beyond the two-thirds majority threshold in an election widely acclaimed by international observers. And in one of the most remarkable recoveries in modern […]
Review of the week Charl Blignaut `I hate theatre,” said my most cynical friend’s boyfriend as he gazed around the Market Theatre bar, taking in the crowd of monied folk out risking their cars to see Pieter-Dirk Uys downtown on a Saturday night at 6.30pm. “Why do you hate theatre?” I asked. My cynical friend […]
Marianne Merten and Howard Barrell When the new Western Cape provincial legislature rises on Tuesday, little will have changed, despite the African National Congress having won the biggest share of votes in the election. This week, the ANC refused an offer of one seat in the 12-seat provincial cabinet. Opposition parties who have agreed on […]
Neil Manthorp Depending on other results, Sunday’s match against Australia could be a case of “win or go home” for both sides. If South Africa have been successful against New Zealand, then Australia will need to win and Hansie Cronje’s side can play without pressure. Either way, South Africa will face a better Australian one-day […]