Peter Mullan, winner of the best actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has a tale to tell those who wonder if it all might go to his head. It stems from his experience working on Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winner about the exploits of William Wallace. Mullan remembers watching the director of the second […]
Stefaans Brmmer: A SECOND LOOK Nicholas Biwott is Kenya’s political bogeyman. The minister of state in the office of President Daniel Arap Moi has a reputation that embraces ruthless murder, kleptomaniacal patronage and cynical manipulation. Any edition of one of Kenya’s more adventurous journals is as likely as not to make reference to what they […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon `One day you boys will find Latin phrases like these come in very useful,” alpaca-coated Brother H used to murmur as he savagely whipped our upturned hands with a thick leather whalebone-spined strap. Six hits. Three for the left, three for the right. A rider discipline to the hand- thrashings: learn […]
Simon Caulkin Stock options have become the Nineties way of rewarding top managers. But as the number of options being granted has exploded, so the boom in share prices has inflated the value of those options. The sheer volume of stock options has achieved such scale that it threatens to undermine the validity of company […]
Andrew Clements CDs of the week Naxos deserves an award. Using archive material supplied by the Canadian-based Immortal Performances of Recorded Music Society, they’ve secured the commercial release of operatic radio broadcasts, taken from live performances from 1937 to 1943, some of them hitherto only available as expensive bootlegs. Not everyone will like these: recording […]
Alex Duval Smith in Zambezi, western Zambia In the darkness of the mud-brick hut, the glint in the man’s eye was as piercing as the flashes of light from the half-dozen diamonds in his palm. “They will cost you 1,6-million kwatcha [R4 800]. At the moment, I can also sell you emeralds, gold dust and […]
The male-to-male escort industry is booming, servicing clients who are typically middle- aged, affluent, white – and most often married. Charl Blignaut spends time at a whorehouse In the quiet street of a leafy suburb in the east of Johannesburg not even the next-door neighbours know that the house next door is a brothel. Why […]
Phillip Kakaza A melancholic nostalgia sweeps through Woza! – the Civic Theatre’s celebration of 40 years of South African musicals – as the soulful voices of Wendy Mseleku and Sibongile Mngoma and the tap-dancing feet of Somizi Mhlongo tour memory lane. King Kong’s blues number Back of the Moon and Ipi Ntombi’s Mama Thembu’s Wedding […]
Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week I don’t have any friends I still know from my schooldays. It’s probably just as well. Most of them weren’t really friends because I was such a wise-ass. But two films opening this week give unique insight into the world of children and growing up. Both are rites- of-passage […]
Lesotho’s elections have been declared fair, but a host of inconsistencies points towards vote rigging, writes William Boot in Maseru The day before Lesotho’s general elections last Saturday, Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) leader Pakaditha Mosisili stuck his neck out to predict: “We will win by a landslide.” He said this at a time when […]