This weekends Kora Awards focus attention on African music. We consider the nominees, Africas peace song and Baaba Maal, last years best vocalist winner Gwen Ansell Theres crisis in Africa. A bunch of famous singers get together to make a song about it and, yes, yawn, youve been there, heard the music, and almost certainly […]
Lay down your swords and get on with the job The last we heard about the hotly contested Basic Conditions of Employment Bill was Tito Mbowenis unilateral announcement a few weeks ago that consensus had been reached a claim as quickly refuted by business as by the labour constituency. Since then, no attempt has been […]
In these two excerpts selected for the M&G by JMCoetzee from Boyhood, his new book, he recalls episodes of his early years in Worcester and Cape Town The bicycle They live on a housing estate outside the town of Worcester, between the railway line and the National Road. The streets of the estate have tree-names […]
Mail & Guardian reporter Dancer Colin Myburgh may have been planning to murder the director of the Johannesburg Dance Theatre, Grayham Davies, when he stabbed and killed colleague Paula Preller in a fit of rage as she tried to stop him, it emerged this week. Colleagues say that Myburgh, who had recently been involved in […]
Sifiso Maseko The festival circuit The word going around is that theatre is dead. What has really died, however, is protest theatre. But while stage practitioners seem to lack direction and the ability to formulate a contemporary enthusiasm that was heightened in protest theatre, all is not lost. The good news is that street theatre, […]
Marion Edmunds The South African government is seeking to play down a report by Amnesty International linking South African arms sales to recent bloodshed in Rwanda. The office of Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal, which oversees South Africa?s international arms trade, questioned Amnesty International?s findings that South Africa was Rwanda?s largest arms […]
In a country where 65% of the population is illiterate, verbal evidence is now accepted as proof of ownership. Mercedes Sayagues reports Mozambiques new land Bill, approved by Parliament in July, amounts to a massive victory for ordinary peasants and contains a landmark provision that makes it unique among land legislation in Southern Africa. The […]
The World Bank sets its sights on alleviating poverty as a rising Asia challenges the United States hegemony, writes Ben Turok What might have been a rather soporific jamboree of 14000 finance ministers, officials and bankers in Hong Kong last week was brought alive by a rude and abrasive exchange between the Premier of Malaysia, […]
Wally Mbhele Deputy minister and African National Congress firebrand Peter Mokaba has stirred up a hornets nest by questioning whether South African Communist Party (SACP) members should remain members of the ANC. Querying whether the present form of the tripartite alliance holds any benefits for the movement, he has taken on one of the liberation […]
under a mango tree Miranda Sawyer World music is defined as All Contemporary Popular Music that Comes from Anywhere Outside Europe or North America Except Jamaica, and for that reason it isnt about to hit the mainstream. This isnt because its useless, or difficult, or because philistine Western taste cant cope with anyone who sings […]