SOUTH AFRICAN publisher Gecko Books is offering a prize of R1 000 for the best short story on the theme of a future South Africa. What will life be like in this country in the next century? That’s the question that has to be addressed – whether seriously or humorously. The publishers hope to compile […]
BONGANI NDODANA on a local composer who left the country to pursue his craft THE grass is certainly much greener in Europe, where a generation of classical composers from Southern Africa have been exiled by their craft and formed what seems to be a musical diaspora. Unlike their predecessors Priaulx Rainier and John Joubert, who […]
John Sturrock HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE by Alain de Botton (Picador, R126) THE montage on the jacket of this slim volume is ominous: why should the gloomy Marcel Proust pictured there have a lurid bird clawing at his shoulder? Is it perhaps a parrot, echoing the unfortunate claim in the blurb that How […]
Chris Dunton FOUR PLAYS compiled and introduced by Zakes Mda (Vivlia, R49,99) THE earliest play here is Maishe Maponya’s Umongikazi/The Nurse, dating from 1983. The premire production toured Europe, though deprived of its two leading performers who were refused travel documents “for security reasons”. That was then – and indeed the play’s subject-matter was itself […]
WEDNESDAY, 11.30AM JOHANNESBURG Consolidated Investments’ MD Bill Nairn resigned yesterday after compromising his position by publicly backing Cyril Ramaphosa’s New Africa Investments Limited in the race for a stake in the mining giant by black empowerment investors. As it turned out, Nairn backed the wrong horse, as Nail’s African Mining Group failed to raise the […]
Even though JOE QUEENAN is annoyed by Spike Lee, he thinks that, with the release of Get on the Bus, it’s time to show respect I DON’T know any white people who like Spike Lee. I know white people who used to like Spike Lee, but that was before his anti-white tirades, his going to […]
Andrew Higgins in Hong Kong IN the dying days of British rule, all eyes in Hong Kong are fixed on a corpse. Around it crowd dozens of television cameras and a throng of mud-slinging mourners. The cause of the controversy is the death of a philandering, opium-smoking and much loved Cantonese opera star. Tang, best […]
RUGBY:Steve Morris IT is a sad state of affairs when the top sides in this country are left to fight it out among themselves for the scraps of the Super 12 semi-final berths. But, as things currently stand in the maelstrom of the three-nation provincial competition, this is indeed the case. With the Auckland Blues, […]
TUESDAY, 9.00AM ENERGY Minister Penuell Maduna yesterday accused the multinational oil companies of exercising a stranglehold on the local oil industry. He suggested instead a government-backed national oil distributor, with a black empowerment share, which would redistribute its profits inside the country. Maduna said the oil industry benefitted from sanctions-era agreements to encourage multinationals to […]
NEW FRONT IN DRUG WAR A GROUP calling itself “Soldiers of Islam” today claimed responsibility for last night’s firebombing of a house in Lenasia, near Johannesburg. An anonymous caller said Soldiers of Islam will continue to bomb houses belonging to drug dealers. The firebombing adds a new twist to the ongoing war between Cape Flats […]