When playwright Ronnie Govender – a former beer salesman and this week’s guest writer – attended a beer sellers’ reunion, he couldn’t help noticing what had – and hadn’t – changed THE giant fig tree behind the Umbilo Hotel stood reluctant sentinel to the beer garden which had seen better times. Layers of soot and […]

bloom Brett Fromson YOU’VE heard of the Nasdaq Stock Market, but how about the Rasdaq? The Rasdaq is Romania’s new stock market; it is one of dozens of financial bazaars to spring up worldwide in the thaw following the end of the Cold War. As communist and socialist governments have fallen, the new regimes have […]

Stephen Moss THE line between pop and classical music was redrawn last week with the unveiling of the first Classical Crossover Chart. Compilations dominate the new chart. Number one is Best Opera Album in the World … Ever, followed by The Greatest Classical Movie Album, and The Number One Classical Album. The listing was introduced […]

the past? Brandon Hamber The kitchen of a small house in downtown So Paulo, Brazil, is the meeting place of the Comisso de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Politicas (Commission of the Families of Political Murder Victims and the Disappeared), an organisation of family members whose loved ones were killed during the military dictatorship in […]

Maya Jaggi Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Hamish Hamilton, R109,95) Following the strange enchantments of his Booker-shortlisted Paradise – set in an East Africa on the brink of World War I – Abdulrazak Gurnah’s new novel grapples with an African-English present. In crisis, an unnamed schoolteacher in south London takes stock of his life. With […]

It’s no use just shouting from the sidelines about the threat to the National Symphony Orchestra, argues Bongani Ndodana ONE of the sad legacies of apartheid cultural policy was the false sense of security it brought to the arts. Provincial performing arts councils were formed and theatres, opera houses and concert halls erected as if […]

Marion Edmunds THE Home Affairs Department’s control over immigration and migration should be handed over to a new ministry, recommends research carried out by a government task team. The task team – chaired by Wilmot James, the Institute for a Democratic South Africa’s executive director – was appointed by Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi last […]

Highveld Stereo’s new managers are grappling with change, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy Former Highveld Stereo managing director Eon de Vos has left the radio station after an association of 17 years. De Vos and some of the new owners of Highveld differed on the strategy that should be used to take Highveld into the next century. […]

If you take your fashion lead from Britain, this is what the stylish will be wearing in 1997, according to SUSANNAH FRANKEL THIS year will go down in history as the year British fashion came into its own. John Galliano unveils his first couture collection for Christian Dior later this month; 27-year-old Alexander McQueen will […]