of relapse hard to detect Andy Duffy Staff at the Valkenberg forensic security unit are busy retracing their steps to see what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the killing of seven people by former state psychiatric patients. There are common threads. Each patient, despite their usually violent history, seemed to have responded […]
Phillip Kakaza African music The sound of a marimba drifts out of Guguletu’s St Gabriel’s church in Cape Town where Ayanda Hollow, a budding musician, is conducting music lessons. The tinkling sound is just a hint of what is happening behind the concrete walls. Hollow’s vision of a vibrant mobile school of African music has […]
Sarfu’s interim committee will be announced next week, with Silas Nkanunu at its head, reports Andy Capostagno Silas Nkanunu is set to become the first black president of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) as part of a dramatic shake-up of the administration of the game that has been set in motion by the […]
Bongani Siqoko The road to Alexandra clinic is lined with filthy industrial buildings. But the large, brightly painted clinic looks cared for and cheerful. Many visitors mistake it for a creche. Inside, however, it looks like any other state-funded health institution. Very long queues, busy nurses, crying children and wheelchairs fill the waiting room. The […]
Andrew O’Hagan CRIES UNHEARD by Gitta Sereny (Macmillan, R88) There is nothing more stupid and corrupt than the collective mind of Britain’s tabloid newspapers. In a spirit of moral outrage they set out to molest the very people who often require protection, sympathy, understanding. The cry of the mob is vicious and total. In full […]
Adam Haupt On stage in Cape Town Charles J Fourie’s Jobias takes biblical symbolism into the Karoo landscape, where it has long been at home in Afrikaner minds. The play deals with the life of a farm worker, Jobias (Andre Roothman), who has been a loyal employer of Oubaas. Jobias, blessed with an abundance of […]
Kuseni Dlamini: CROSSFIRE Is the left in South Africa and the rest of the world facing a ”mysterious decline” (Crossfire, May 8 to 14), or is it having a ”facelift” (Crossfire, May 15 to 21)? The left has never been held in lower esteem than it is today. At best, it is seen as impotent […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS An interviewee once told me she knew her husband was the one for her when he took her out to dinner at the Three Ships in the Carlton hotel. No boyfriend had ever put himself out like that for her before. But her two sons will never know this symbol of […]
Thulo Hoeane The tranquillity of a late autumn morning is suddenly broken by a deafening voice blaring out of a 3 000-watt sound system. Maseru suddenly comes to life as an off-white bakkie which has seen better days passes by, winding its way down Kingsway, the capital’s main street. At the wheel of the bakkie […]
Guy Butler If known at all, Sister Margaret of the Community of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Grahamstown, is known as the painter of one picture, the splendid mural in the apse of St Mary and All the Angels, the Chapel of Rhodes University. It was painted between 1924 to 1928. She painted mainly for […]