Alex Dodd – Milan, Marseille, New York, Rotterdam A short, hard-hitting film about xenophobia in the heart of Johannesburg by local film- maker Zola Maseko has been playing to thunderous applause around the world. This is the first time a film by a black South African director has achieved such widespread international acclaim. The Foreigner […]
Greig Coetzee’s plays have shown alternative sides of the male psyche. Denise rack Louw probed him about his characters `For me, writing is a passion. At times it can also be a pain in the ass; but, like eating and sleeping it’s something I simply have to do,” says Greig Coetzee, author and executor of […]
George Steiner EXPLAINING HITLER by Ron Rosenbaum (Macmillan) It may well be that I am not the right reviewer for this book. Ron Rosenbaum places me and my novel, The Portage to San Christobal of AH, among the principal players in his dark tale. Explaining Hitler, a highly personal study of those who have sought […]
Keith Henderson : Live in Johannesburg The queue for the Springbok Nude Girls outside the Roxy Rhythm Bar, Melville, was the kind which makes you feel it would be a lot easier to turn around and go home. There was probably at least one thing on television last Saturday that you could’ve fooled yourself into […]
Ed Vulliamy in Washington : Basketball After six Naitional Basketball Association (NBA) championships – the latest won in an epic final series against Utah Jazz last month – Americans are accustomed to gravity-defying acrobatics from the Chicago Bulls. But not of this kind. Last Thursday afternoon, the Bulls managed a contortion which beats almost any […]
Geoffrey V Davis The death of Matsemela Manaka last Saturday deprives the South African theatre community of one of its foremost practitioners at a tragically early age. His many friends and collaborators overseas will join in mourning the loss of an artist whose remarkable career was distinguished by a delight in experimentation and innovation fuelled […]
Mungo Soggot The state oil company has slashed the number of charges and dropped all fraud allegations against suspended chief oil trader Kobus van Zyl, who is due to be disciplined in the next few weeks. Van Zyl was publicly ousted in March 1997 by the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Penuell Maduna, triggering the […]
Angella Johnson View From a Broad I don’t get it. Shirley MacLaine was an Egyptian princess in one of her past lives. Other people became Napoleon, or some other historical great. But me: I got to be some illiterate, forest-dwelling nobody living in the England of 1066. I was a peasant called Phil (mmm, doesn’t […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Dan Mabote, accused of raping, abducting and then killing seven-year-old Mamokgethi Malebana, may soon get his just reward. But family and friends of Mamokgethi say people who aided her killing, albeit inadvertently, will get off scot-free. “I blame the people who granted him bail,” says Mamokgethi’s mother, Joyce Malebana. “I want something to […]
Adam Haupt If you’re one of those people who thinks that Steve Newman and Tony Cox are the only acoustic guitar virtuosos around, you’ve been lied to. It’s no sordid conspiracy, though. It’s just that Leslie Jovan sees himself as a community worker and not a musician. To him music is a vehicle for other […]