A barrister berates Shell in front of village elders. It’s music to the ears o f the military, writes Patrick Donovan GIVE him a wig and black silk gown, and Napolean Agbedetse could have walked b ack into the south London courtrooms where he used to practise as a barrister. He is on the bank […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm JEAN-PAUL Rappeneau’s bustling Cyrano de Bergerac was thought a considerable risk to make, but turned out to be one of the most successful European films of recent years. That, however, is nothing compared with the risk taken with his latest film, The Horseman on the Roof, probably the most expensive French film […]

ELIZABETH DONALDSON previews the four half-hour television films selected for M-Net’s annual homegrown film competition AFTER two years, M-Net’s clumsy duckling has emerged a glorious swan. Gone is the fluffy, ungainly waddle of the annual New Directions competition; the baby is fast maturing and is set to take flight across your TV screens this winter. […]

For the workers carved up with machetes last week, genocide happens just once. Chris McGreal reports from Bujumbura There is a difference of opinion in Burundi about the cement factory manager w ho burnt 22 of his workers to death, and sold tickets to their fellow employee s to watch. The manager is a Tutsi, […]

Antonio Ole deserves the prize for the best one- person “production” in Grahamstown. Less an installation than a poignant piece of theatre, his mixed-media opus, Breaking Boundaries, spans virtually the entire spectrum of colonial history, and simultaneously engages in the most pertinent discourses of contemporary art, without sacrificing the specifics of time, place or personal […]

The Charlie Chaplin of Hong Kong action, Jackie Chan, has crossed over to the West. ANDREW WORSDALE reports WITH Rumble in the Bronx, Jackie Chan has taken the peculiar brand of “slapstick kung-fu” which has made him the undisputed king of Asian cinema and finally smashed his way into the American box-office. His first major […]

With the formidable Australians and then the awesome All Blacks ahead, the Springboks cannot be expected to remain unbeaten RUGBY: Jon Swift THE thing that impressed so much about Kitch Christie as the coach of our national rugby team was that air of calmness about him. Christie, you felt, always had a game plan, a […]

THERE’S a lot to be said for slouching over a barstool, alcohol seeping through every crack and recording otherwise unrepeatable gems of wit and wisdom (yours and anyone else’s within slurring distance). That’s how Chris McEvoy has put together his material for Hollow, a searingly funny stand-up comic routine on the relationship between life and […]

IT’S common cause that the first desire one has on hitting the Grahamstown Festival is to get the hell out of there. Nervous breakdowns also tend to happen with alarming regularity. No one knows why. But most of us tend to stifle the onset of culture-phobia, don thermal underwear and join the heterogeneous hordes on […]

Business attacks labour clauses The prospect of renegotiating the constitution gives the ANC the jitters, repo rts Marion Edmunds The African National Congress’s constitution-makers are increasingly jittery t hat opposition parties will want to unravel large chunks of the constitution, should it fail certification, and be thrown back at the Constitutional Assembl y (CA) by […]