GWEN ANSELL talks to a new generation of jazz composers involved in Our Music Our Voices at the breakthrough 1997 Windybrow Arts Festival IN a tiny, sweaty rehearsal room at the Windybrow Theatre an improbably large band of musicians pounds its way through McCoy Mrubata’s Sangoma Blues. In the middle, in the few square feet […]
The CNA Literary Award is no more. SHAUN DE WAAL looks back at its successes and failures, and asks some questions about a future prize AFTER 35 years, the CNA Literary Award has come to an end. Some might accuse this paper of having helped to kill it – after all, Sarah Ruden, who won […]
Denis Staunton in Berlin and Ian Traynor in Bonn A SENIOR adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl has called on him to admit that Germany would not pass the test this year for a single European currency and urged a delay in the launch of European Monetary Union (EMU). But as Herbert Hax – head of […]
Thomas Mallon SELECTED STORIES by Alice Munro (Chatto & Windus, R110) ALICE MUNRO’S deeply imagined, almost awesome Selected Stories turn William Faulkner’s famous musing about the past’s not really being past into an understatement. In Munro’s world, the present is scarcely present; the moment we live in is just a flask in which the past’s […]
SO, the first black finance minister presented his first Budget and the sky did not fall in. After a year of faux pas and financial market fiascos, Trevor Manuel did the impossible: he nigh on pleased all of the people, at least for a few hours. Parliament applauded, and the markets rewarded him with a […]
Confessions by five former policemen have revealed the devious operations of the security police, including the murder of a man working clandestinely for the military. Peta Thornycroft reports FORMER northern Transvaal security policeman captain Jacques Hechter has the dubious honour of admitting to more murders than any other confessor to the truth commission. In his […]
DANCE: Swapna Prabhakaran WHY did they call it the Dance Umbrella? For two weeks now, there’s been a gentle but persistent rain over the city of Johannesburg, adding its own peculiar drumming to the rhythms of dance at the Wits Theatre. The grey downpour outside the Braamfontein building drew a motley crew indoors to share […]
Tangeni Amupadhi reports on an inquiry into Northern Province property deals that have earned a fortune for an amiable Greek millionaire TO the politicians and community leaders of the Northern Province he is a fatherly figure, a kind of patron saint of Phalaborwa. Dimitri Kourtoumbellides, known to his friends as Jimmy, has on various occasions […]
THE X-FILES has been a huge international hit since it launched in the US three years ago, and it has just won three Golden Globe awards. Now its creator, Chris Carter, has taken an even bigger risk with his new series, Millennium. In Britain, Alan Yentob, director of programmes at BBC-TV, asks Carter about the […]
Trevor Manuel’s first Budget confounded his critics and pleased the markets, reports Madeleine Wackernagel THE South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) has long called for a champion to lead the government’s growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy. On Wednesday, it looked like one had been found. Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel dubbed his first Budget […]