FINE ART: Hazel Freidman WAS it a balloon or a bomb? At the opening of Unplugged, at the Market’s Rembrandt Gallery, opinion was divided as to whether the big bang resounding from the gallery rafters approximately 45 minutes into the exhibition was the consequence of faulty wiring or an audio installation by exhibition ”curator” Kendell […]

With javelin star Tom Petranoff helping them, South Africa’s disabled athletes are leading the way in throwing events, writes Julian Drew SOUTH AFRICA’S most successful group of international sportsmen and women will hold their national championships at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria this weekend, and with places in the team for the Paralympics in Atlanta on […]

MUSIC: Gwen Ansell ‘A CONCERT to celebrate being us” is Sibongile Khumalo’s only label for her new national tour programme. The Gwen Paterson lookalikes in the gallery may take that as a cue for self- congratulation — but any ambiguity is purely in the ears of the beholder. For what Khumalo and her musical director, […]

THEATRE: Peter Frost DARIO FO is primarily an entertainer, and his Elizabeth (Almost by Chance a Woman) is just that: entertainment, albeit it lengthy and convoluted. But the buzz on the streets is not so much the script’s success, as the enormous talent it has unearthed. Robyn Scott, making her stage debut as the aging […]

Philippa Garson finds a new mood on the formerly militant Turfloop campus — students are tired of politics; now they just want degrees WHEN the Students Christian Movement (SCM) came to power in last year’s SRC elections at the University of the North (Turfloop), it seemed that the wheel had turned full circle. Turfloop was […]

Christie RUGBY: Jon Swift THE decision by the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) to get national coach Kitch Christie to step down as the steersman of Transvaal’s storm-tossed fortunes should come as no real surprise. Neither should the volte-face be examined in any other light than that Sarfu inspired the double-barrelled responsibility in the […]

TELEVISION: Hazel Friedman ‘HOW can one forget or forgive when the distrust lies so deep?” This is one of the many questions posed by Beauty (Mama) Mkhize, one of the central protagonists in award- winning producer Barbara Volscher’s Chronicles of Change, a documentary series to be screened weekly on SABC3 from March 18. Divided into […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN bids farewell to once fted, now forgotten rural woodcarver Doctor Phutuma Seoka FEW people would have noticed the small farewell to a “well-known woodcarver from the Northern Province” which recently appeared in the Mail & Guardian personals column. Doc Phutuma Seoka died on February 22 at Duiwelskloof “after a long illness”, the notice […]

The Open Democracy Bill has already been before a Cabinet committee and is expected to go before the full Cabinet in the next three weeks. It is a long and complex Bill intended to give teeth to the government’s undertaking to give meaning to the idea of open democracy. If enacted, the Bill would give […]

Breastfeeding has become an issue of marketing, rather than motherhood, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy The health department is still debating whether to legislate against the advertising of infant formula milk, in its bid to encourage pregnant women to breastfeed. While mothers remain stripped of information relating to infant formula milk, government could further smack down on […]