Fools, the film based on the short stories of Njabulo Ndebele and directed by Ramadan Suleman, opens on circuit this week, Andrew Worsdale spoke to the director Ramadan Suleman is a passionate guy. He uses his intense, piercing eyes when he talks and gesticulates powerfully. No wonder. He spent about 10 years in Paris and […]
Duncan Mackay witnesses auspicious changes in the status of Qatar’s women The approach to the Khalifa Stadium on the edges of Doha, Qatar’s capital city, takes you down a long road past date palms, papyruses and cypresses. Creamy buildings, which seem to have been lifted from either Paris boulevards or Cairo squares, rise steeply from […]
Swapna Prabhakaran The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health announced an “inadequate” health budget for 1998/99 this week, sparking an outcry from hospital staff who predict it will have dire consequences for health services. Drastic cutbacks in services and staff have already been implemented at some provincial hospitals in preparation for the budget, which is R621-million short […]
Norman Reynolds: A SECOND LOOK Public anger about the violence involved in the taxi wars is intensifying. In township after township people have met and marched, but to no avail: citizens remain the victims of an unfair, dangerous and badly organised industry. The government has promised to reform the “taxi industry”. It is trying to […]
Sarah Boseley and Tim Radford Cancer is one of the world’s biggest killers. It is a stealthy predator, corrupting the cells of a healthy body, doing damage and hastening death without displaying, for a long while, any outward sign. The treatment is unpleasant and the outcome uncertain. Nobody can be sure they will not fall […]
Caroline Sullivan Even after their four million-selling debut, Garbage’s second album was never going to rouse panting anticipation. The reason is neatly encapsulated in the understated title, Version 2.0. Derived from computer software, it mumbles “very dull”. In spite of the presence of Nirvana producer Butch Vig (drums, effects) and the pin-sharp Shirley Manson (vocals), […]
Angella Johnson The first thing Hazel Kidson did on entering the Johannesburg courtroom where she is standing trial for murdering her husband was reapply her lipstick. Then the bejewelled 52-year-old sat clutching her miniature Bible. “I always carry it with me,” she later explained. After more than a year in jail, she was dressed to […]
Elvis Costello pays tribute to Frank Sinatra My mam tells me that one of my first words was “skin”. I was not an especially precocious child, I couldn’t say whole sentences, but I knew how to request that I’ve Got You under My Skin be played on the family record player. Then again, I might […]
Shaun de Waal CD of the week The Bassline in Melville, Johannesburg, has proved itself to be one of the city’s most reliable jazz joints, perhaps even its best. Everyone who is anyone in South African jazz has played there, and this CD, Jazz at the Bassline (Sheer Sound), collects 12 works by this country’s […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Gangs have triumphed in Westbury – Johannesburg’s equivalent of the Cape Flats ganglands – after promises of big business and politicians have come to naught. In recent weeks four men have been slain in gun fights – an event familiar to this dirt-poor community which, for decades, has enjoyed the notoriety of having […]