The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), ditched last week by its sugar daddy, the SABC, finds itself in the position of most South African cultural organisations: under-funded and in danger of collapse. It will have to fight for its survival by attracting support in competition with such bodies as the Market Theatre or township art centres. […]

Boris Becker is devoted to tennis and to his family. While one is threatened by age and injury, the other is threatened by racism and hate. Stephen Bierley reports THERE is a thin stream of fear that constantly trickles through the minds of all the world’s top sportsmen and women. Pressure, stress, anxiety, apprehension, loss […]

The truth commission has released details of the Steyn Report, concealed since 1992 – and it contains startling disclosures. Stefaans BrUmmer reports FORMER state president FW de Klerk entrusted action on the elusive Steyn Report, which linked the apartheid military to “third force” activities, to three top military officials who were themselves implicated – including […]

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 […]