With the International Film Festival opening this Friday, ANDREW WORSDALE takes a look at the past, present and future of SA film festivals THE International Film Festival which opens this week is the baby of Len Davis, the man who started the Johannesburg Film Festival back in 1977. It played at the beautiful Monte Carlo […]

Marion Edmunds Fears that the country will lose the essential skills of its scientists, engineers and technicians is driving a government investigation into the brain-drain from the public sector. And while the science and technology division of the Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Department has already launched a formal investigation into its skills losses, other […]

Bronwen Jones BANKERS and broadcasters were this week introduced to a little Xhosa mythology by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, at the multiple launch in Johannesburg of 40 new books. He was not reading from one of the stories just published, but was using the example of the terrible Impundulo bird to explain the destructiveness of […]

Last week’s Body Politic conference in Johannesburg radically altered the image of the crusty old academy, writes JAMES SEY THE Department of Psychology at Wits University and Unisa recently co-hosted an intriguing two day event at the atmospheric old Wits Medical School building in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Dubbed The Body Politic, it is the second annual […]

THEATRE: Gwen Ansell THE poet sits mute in a chair while the secret policeman berates him for writing poems which incite “raised fists at memorial services in Regina Mundi”. Not surprising, you might think, in a play staged as a tribute to the late Steven Bantu Biko, murdered 19 years ago. Only halfway through the […]

ANC members who are under investigation by the party are involved in the company alleged to be behind the bid to pay for the ill-fated Aids play. Stefaans BrUmmer and Ann Eveleth report THE investment company named in this week’s controversy over the ill-fated R10,5-million Sarafina II rescue bid is run by a motley crew […]

Mail & Guardian Reporters PUBLIC Protector Selby Baqwa’s baptism of fire over the Sarafina II debacle has drawn a mixed reception from political parties and commentators. The Inkatha Freedom Party slammed his performance, saying Baqwa had been “unfair to the public which demands transparency”. The party’s health study group deputy chair, Jeanette Wilikazi, said he […]

Shaun de Waal DURBANITE folkie and sometime leader of The Utenstils, Syd Kitchen, plays jazz-singer/guitarist on City Child. The opening song is a charming if ambivalent miniature of growing up “to city freedom” and “city hatred”, and from there on the songs flow easily one after the other. In terms of its sound, the album […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson OPENING night of Return To The Forbidden Planet at the Victory Theatre was a riot. Amid tables sagging under schnapps and snacks, the audience, before the show, mingled with crew members of the space ship that was to take them on a lavish rock-and-roll space adventure. Two hours later they left with […]

Next week the world will gain insight into the mind and motives of South Africa’s most accomplished assassin as he enters the dock, writes Eddie Koch Colonel Eugene de Kock, the man billed as South Africa’s most accomplished assassin, will round off one of the country’s most extraordinary murder cases when he goes into the […]