CABARET: Peter Frost NATALIE GAMSU, back in South Africa after a four-year stint in New York, returns to a closing venue: the Cape Town landmark Upstairs at Elaine’s will go dark after Gamsu’s show closes. Punters should break their necks, however, to see the swansong. Gamsu is better than ever, the beneficiary of some tough […]

One committed to emulating Europe; the other finding talent at home. COENRAAD VISSER reports on two opera companies fighting to survive TWO professional opera companies are playing in Gauteng — only one likely to survive in the long term, according to current thinking in the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The teasing question […]

Unmarried fathers who want to raise their illegitimate children could have the right to do so, if draft legislation before the Cabinet is approved, reports Rehana Rossouw JOHN WILLIAMS (25), a printer from Mitchells Plain, is forced to sneak visits with his six-year-old daughter at her Sunday school class. The child’s mother cut off Williams’s […]

The winds of change have barely touched Stellenbosch University, reports Marion Edmunds, but this is unlikely to be the case for much longer A small group of Stellenbosch students roasted their vice- rector at a campus debate this week, challenging him to initiate a process of transformation at the University of Stellenbosch and mocking the […]

Ruben Mowszowski Commuters travelling to and from work might complain about being harangued by preachers in the coaches, but they can always move. However, if Metrorail goes ahead with a plan to pipe radio broadcasts into its trains, those who value the quiet journey will have to put up with it or find some other […]

Marion Edmunds reports on the outstanding issues The Constitutional Assembly is to release the fourth working draft of the Constitution next week. It will chart almost three months of progress since the last draft was published in December. But in anticipation of this draft, here is a summary of where we stand now. Unresolved issues […]

It was a first: an advertisement flighted simultaneously on all four channels. And it cost millions. Hazel Friedman watched the advert which brought mysticism to the concrete industry Strange, inexplicable sightings have been known to take place on the SABC from time-to- time. But nothing could rival the image onslaught that hit viewers during prime-time […]

Marion Edmunds It was a casual weekend — Hernus Kriel was wearing baggy tracksuit pants, Sheila Camerer a light pink slack suit, John Mavuso designer moccasins and FW de Klerk a checked shirt. But behind the informality and bonhomie in Hermanus, the Nats were in deadly earnest. “Tell me,” said De Klerk, leaning in earnest […]

While the government considers more equitable ways of aiding the film industry, Justin Pearce reports that a single producer scooped more than half the subsidy money in recent years Films, including Oh Schucks, it’s Schuster and There’s a Zulu on my Stoep, earned more than R20-million in government subsidies for film production giant, Toron, over […]

STEVE GORDON, organiser of several music tours to South Africa, explains why the Cape Town jazz festival collapsed — and how to put together a successful event ANNOUNCED by Captour in 1994 as “the biggest- ever jazz festival in Africa”, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which collapsed last week, had already tasted controversy a […]