The latest SA/UK gospel choir collaboration is a sign of the rebirth of interest in local choral music. GWENANSELL looks at the state of songs of praise HIT parade trends may come and go, but South Africa’s love affair with gospel seems to go on forever. Its latest expression is an incandescent vocal collaboration between […]
New soapie The Burning Issue just doesn’t wash, says ANDREW WORSDALE WHY are South African sit-coms and soapies so strained and dreadful and boring? My belief is it’s because they try to serve as education and as drama, with teaching and issues always taking the upper hand. Apart from the critically acclaimed hit series Soul […]
A philosophical Greg Norman returns this week to the Augusta course that broke his heart GOLF:Bill Elliott BY any of the usual standards applied to this varied life, Greg Norman should have been contemplating his arrival at Augusta in Georgia this week with all the rampant anticipation of a politician approaching his current mistress to […]
CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale IAN KERKHOF is South Africa’s most radical and prolific film-maker. He has been resident in Amsterdam since the mid-Eighties, when he went into exile and worked for the Dutch anti- apartheid movement and South African War Resistance until 1986. Since then he’s made over 20 films, all of which push the envelope […]
Do not adjust your set. The image is changing. Maria McCloy on a fresher generation of South African television presenters REMEMBER the days when everything on TV, including shows aimed at the younger generation, was hosted by 40-year-olds with matching shirts and cheesy grins? When the music shows were presented by blonde English wannabees and […]
RUGBY: Mick Cleary RESPECT is not a concept which the Afrikaner has traditionally handed out with any great generosity to his fellow men. It took the profound dignity of Nelson Mandela, not to mention many years of incarceration, finally to prick the nation’s conscience into doing the decent thing. The British Lions have chosen a […]
The South African team shrugged off all the adversity during their visit to Brazzaville last week … untill the second half of the match when they finally succumbed to Congo fever SOCCER:Julian Drew IT’S only eight o’clock on Sunday morning at the central market in the Patrice Lumumba district of Pointe Noire but already there […]
SOCCER:Julian Drew FEW people gave Congo much of a chance against Clive Barker’s African Champions in last Sunday’s crucial world cup qualifier in Pointe Noire. Bafana Bafana were unbeaten in seven games and after holding the seeded Zambians in Lusaka, they were favoured to head the group and book their place in next year’s showpiece […]
JAZZ ON CD: Gwen Ansell THERE’S a crop of South African jazz releases, distributed by indie Sheer Sounds, this month. Paul Hanmer’s Trains To Taung is the pick, and not just because of the super-stylish liner notes printed on Chinese funeral money. Pianist Hanmer has taken a very different approach to creating an African sound […]
Bridgette A Lacy THE SEASONS OF BEENTO BLACKBIRD by Akosua Busia (Hutchinson, R97,95) IMAGINE a man who is “a broad-shouldered six- foot-four silhouette headed across the tarmac like a panther on the prowl . Focused. Upright. Full of power.” Did I mention that this man spends winters with one wife on a Caribbean island and […]
THEATRE: Julie Barker `THE struggle never made me famous.” These are words uttered by a gangster at the height of his career. This is Gomorrah!, a powerful new work directed by Pule Hlatshwayo, and conceived by the cast, all graduates of the Market Theatre Laboratory. Gomorrah! explores the inevitability of violence as a way of […]
The winner of 1997’s first Grand Slam tournament became the youngest No 1 in the history of women’s tennis when she succeeded Steffi Graf TENNIS:Stephen Bierley THE man in the Lipton Championships courtesy car knew a lot about tennis. He eased himself back in his driving seat, squinted into the dazzling early-morning Florida sun and […]
JKL Walker THE FATAL ENGLISHMAN: THREE SHORT LIVES by Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, R57,95) AFTER the success of his Great War novel Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks has turned aside from fiction to present, in The Fatal Englishman, a biographical triptych of three young men of apparent brilliance and promise who met early deaths in mysterious and tragic […]
FINE ART: Hazel Friedman WHEW. Breathing space. That’s one of the first reactions one has to Zone, the all-girl group show currently on at the Generator Art Space. Admittedly, the welcome sigh derives partly from the fact that these days almost anything represents a respite from the work of the Caucasian Testosterone Club – that […]
Soul-jazz diva Erykah Badu is climbing the world’s charts and has been hailed as the new Billie Holliday. DAN GLAISTER takes in her British debut INCENSE, candles, an ethnic curio on the floor – the set suggests voodoo, but this is no voodoo show. Welcome to Baduizm, the precinct of Erykah Badu, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter […]
HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on the controversial Section 13 clause and an outcry over control of state arts funding CULTURAL workers this week lashed out at the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) for trying to hijack the independence of the newly established National Arts Council (NAC), the non-governmental statutory body that holds the […]
Thabo Mbeki’s task team is fine-tuning a strategy to tackle its brief on government communications, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE 10-member media task group appointed late last year by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki plans to take trips abroad in a bid to conduct in loco inspections of foreign government communication departments. Task group convener Mandla Langa […]
New sponsors and new faces will greet cricket fans at the start of next season CRICKET: Jon Swift IN sport, very much as in life but in an abbreviated and upfront way, one year past brings with it the inevitable promise of the 12 months ahead. So it is with South African cricket. The game […]
Confusion over South African visas put paid to a meeting of Nigerian opposition groups in Johannesburg, writes Justin Pearce A CONFERENCE in Johannesburg intended to bring together the fragmented Nigerian opposition groups had to be put on hold after the majority of the delegates failed to obtain visas to come to South Africa. The prospective […]
Justin Pearce AFRIKANERS battling for the survival of Afrikaans-only schools are pinning their hopes on President Nelson Mandela as constitutional negotiations draw to a close. But the African National Congress has yet to be convinced the battle for Afrikaans is not driven by a racist agenda. In the past two weeks, representatives of Afrikaner cultural […]
Ann Eveleth King Goodwill Zwelithini wants South African taxpayers to finance an extensive new royal bureaucracy to help him woo KwaZulu-Natal’s traditional leaders out of the political quagmire he led them into during decades of submission to Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. A royal budget proposal handed to former Provincial and Constitutional Affairs Minister […]
Eddie Koch The Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week faced challenges on three fronts just as it was gearing up to hear applications for amnesty later this month from agents who committed human rights abuses in the apartheid era. Firstly, the families of four murdered activists announced they will launch a Constitutional Court application for […]
TENNIS: Jon Swift THE Italians are a people full of surprises. It is difficult to get things moving in the beautiful country, yet the nation had the sensitivity and foresight to sandbag the wall which carries the breathtaking fresco of the Last Supper during the time of the last global nastiness. And the chapel of […]
Ann Eveleth The air force flights of former defence minister Magnus Malan and his co-accused in the Durban Supreme Court murder trial are saving the state about R7 000 each weekend, according to a South African Airways (SAA) estimate. South African National Defence Force (SANDF) spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Margie Neethling confirmed the fuel and maintenance costs […]
Simon Segal A repeat performance two years later, and still the markets and critics did not learn. The sky did not fall in when Derek Keys resigned as finance minister in October 1994. The equally sudden resignation of Keys’ successor from the private sector, Chris Liebenberg, again caused an over-reaction, especially from those traders who […]
Economic issues frequently override the fear of crime for prospective investors in South Africa, writes Madeleine Wackernagel Contrary to popular wisdom, South Africa’s high crime rate is not a significant deterrent to foreign investment, according to a new survey. Professor Robin Lee, who collated the research for the Nedcor Project, was somewhat surprised at the […]
Statistics show that most deaths in KwaZulu- Natal are caused by weapons other than guns, writes Ann Eveleth Police statistics for violent deaths in KwaZulu-Natal are in stark contrast to Inkatha Freedom Party Premier Frank Mdlalose’s claims last week that most victims “are killed by bullets that come from guns, not by spears or knobkerries”. […]
The play: Much Ado About Nonsense Cast: Makgoba, Van Onselen, Davis, Pityana, et al Verdict: New cast, old script. A political farce in two instances Critic: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert It is necessary to put this two-act political farce into the proper perspective. It was performed at smaller, lesser-known venues (I know that universities and […]
TELEVISION: Hazel Friedman As television arts programmes go, Extreme Africa is up there with the best of them. A composite of The Works — in terms of its slick editing techniques and hip format — and Arts Unlimited — in terms of its multiculturally correct approach to art — it offers an exhilarating, eclectic mix […]
Remember the day last week that Pallo Jordan was fired from the Cabinet. We will look back at it as a moment which marked a major shift in the political style and approach of the African National Congress. The dismissal of the most independent-minded left-wing intellectual in the Cabinet had nothing to do with his […]
Chris McGreal looks at the man behind Nigeria’s greatest martyr — and finds someone who is not a saint Ken Saro-Wiwa barely raised his head from the wooden dock to acknowledge the man who probably did as much as any witness to despatch him to the gallows. Across the dilapidated courtroom, Mohammed Kobani gave a […]
Stefaans Brummer BOTSWANA is rapidly expanding its defence force, bucking a trend of demilitarisation in Southern Africa and sparking fears that the region’s most peaceful country may be heading for instability. A controversial order of an estimated 50 tanks from the Netherlands this year follows closely on that of another 36 British tanks. Botswana, which […]