Does the controversial artwork Useful Objects achieved its stated aim? Feminist Nomboniso Gasa argues that it portrays women as helpless IT was with interest and irritation that I read last week’s Mail & Guardian response to Baleka Kgositsile’s objections to the ashtray created by Kaolin Thompson. It is correct to lobby for freedom of expression, […]
Pagad support appeared to be waning this week, though the organisation strongly denies it. Rehana Rossouw reports PEOPLE Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) called off a march to drug dealers this week, but the organisation said this was not evidence that it has run out of steam. Pagad representative Farouk Jaffer said the decision was […]
Tebello Radebe The meandering road leading to the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) Midrand headquarters has changed little from the late 1980s. It is possibly the only thing that has remained the same about the bank as it faces the millennium with a new direction and mandate. This year has been characterised by instability, […]
Les Misrables may be good, but it shouldn’t promise to save SA theatre, writes MARK GEVISSER LES Misrables offers a vexing conundrum. How is it possible for a production to be such a smash hit when its plot is so arcane, its rag-clad chorus so unglamorous and its tunes so unhummable; when its stage languishes […]
In a flashback to the past, the censors published a list of banned magazines last week. Why? Gaye Davis reports THE country’s chief censor, Dr Braam Coetzee, says he feels like ”lying down and saying, ‘Carry me off the field.”’ He and the 50 or so housewives, retired school inspectors, theologians, lecturers and teachers who […]
Gaye Davis A group of African National Congress women MPs have launched an eleventh-hour bid to return South Africa to the calvinistic days of star-covered nipples and black tape over salacious text. They are bidding to turn back the clock on the passage of the Film and Publications Bill, believing it is too soft on […]
Many Muslims are wary of the militant organisation that has a strong hand in the controversial anti-crime group Pagad. Rehana Rossouw reports On the eve of the elections in 1994, Qibla leader Achmad Cassiem pronouced from platforms in mosques in the Cape that South Africa would be an Islamic state by the year 2000. Between […]
CINEMA: Jonathan Romney NOVELIST Paul Auster has described Blue in the Face as a “hymn to the great People’s Republic of Brooklyn”. Judging by the film, such a hymn would sound like a full brass band with Latino rappers and boozy singalong accompaniment, belting out an off- key version of Take Me Out to the […]
South Africa’s new Premier Soccer League kicked off last week with results — on and off the field — – not living up to expectations SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi ROUND two of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) comes up this weekend with clubs hoping for more goals and spectators and fewer red cards and armed robberies. […]
Kevin Mitchell unveils the game behind the Games in which baubles are converted into big bucks as athletes and accessories are reduced to marketable commodities in a procession from the podium to the bank THE organisers say that the Atlanta Games will “break even”. Well, that’s all right then. President Bill Clinton said: “They were […]