Mail & Guardian correspondents A last-ditch attempt by a coalition of states to rescue the ailing regime of Congolese President Laurent Kabila may have come too late as anti-government rebels continued their inexorable march to the capital Kinshasa this week. Despite reports of a ceasefire offer from the rebels and desperate attempts by South Africa […]
Ron Sakolsky is an academic, journalist and activist whose main interest is the cultural politics of music. He’s not a serious musician although he “dabbles” in several instruments. Sakolsky is visiting South Africa until the end of the year. While he is here he plans to interview Mzwakhe Mbuli in jail to talk about his […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Premier Soccer League chief executive officer Trevor Phillips has tried and failed to reduce the size of the 18- club Castle Premiership, the richest national championship in Africa. This week, his South African Football Association counterpart, Danny Jordaan, tackled the same problem from a different angle, proposing that his organisation buy two […]
An American academic believes the term `world music’ is merely an excuse for music companies to indulge in music cannibalism, writes Anthea Garman In the great age of discovery adventurers like Christopher Columbus sallied forth to explore the planet – with results that have continued to bedevil humanity into this century. Today in a similar […]
Band member and music writer Dave Chislett gives his view of 5FM’s live sessions Lately, late night radio listeners will have encountered a treat on 5FM, at 11.30 on Tuesday nights: the TDK Live’n’Loud sessions, on Barney Simon’s South African music explosion slot, have been showcasing the very best in South African rock and pop […]
Ann Eveleth Gauteng residents will have a “legal obligation” to care for their elderly parents, and could face fines of up to R50 000 or up to five years’ imprisonment if they are found to be “negligent”. This is one of the proposals of the Securing the Future for Gauteng’s Elderly Bill – one of […]
Digby Ricci THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal (Knopf) One hates to bow to conventional wisdom, but Gore Vidal really is a far better essayist than he is a novelist. In his essays, the erudition is elegantly startling, but never obtrusive, and the much-vaunted “mordant wit” is a rapier, not a bludgeon. Thus, Susan Sontag’s […]
Phillip Kakaza Ella and Louis, Neneh and Youssou, Sam and Dave – today they’re names that go together like bread and butter. New to this territory of legendary musical collaboration comes the one happening here and now between local R&B/hip-hop funkmaster E’Smile, explorative drummer Barry van Zyl and bass guitarist Andre Abrahamse. Under the collective […]
Who is . . . George Soros? Larry Elliott It’s 7.45pm on the evening of September 16 1992. Night is falling and the chancellor of the exchequer, an ashen-faced Norman Lamont, nervously runs his hands through his hair as the flashbulbs pop. After a day of disaster in which the Bank of England’s foreign currency […]
Watching local soccer drama Lisenethini on SABC1, Peter Makurube recalls days when failure to gain entry to a stadium reduced grown men to tears The creation of a soccer drama Lisenethini, starring local heroes, about our own demi-gods of the pigskin, is the best thing to have happened on television since the first screenings of […]