CLASSICAL CD OF THE YEAR: Andrew Clements GURRELIEDER was Schoenberg’s farewell to 19th- century romanticism, the “key to his development”, as he described it. It was begun in 1901 but was only performed 12 years later, by which time he had left the lush Wagnerian world that it celebrates far behind. The massive proportions of […]
Aspasia Karras Mike Gcabo has landed a coup: the North West Builders=20 Federation (NWBF), of which he is president, has just=20 embarked on one of the biggest construction contracts ever=20 awarded to black builders. A R60-million joint venture between Mawite (a consortium of=20 nine builders from the NWBF) and LTA Building will rebuild=20 the Mabopane […]
The listing of two new companies on the JSE this week put dealers in the mood for making money, Jacques Magliolo Investors received a double treat at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) this week as two new company listings took place, bringing to an end weeks of lacklustre market performance. The listing of ChromeCorp Holdings […]
SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones WITH little more than two weeks to go before the start of the next Rothmans Cape to Rio race, preparations are gathering pace for this, one of the foremost southern hemisphere yachting events. Yet it has not proved as popular as had been expected with the final total of 59 entries […]
Ann Eveleth African National Congress (ANC) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leaders have taken off their gloves to wage an all-fronts battle between their respective power- As negotiators from both parties prepared to sit down at the table this week for what turned out to be little more than “talks before talks before talks” discussions, […]
Bronwen Jones Soweto’s first bookshop will open its doors in Dobsonville on June 1. The bookshop idea, which has been tossed back and forth since last year in NGO-land, initially met with doubts and tales of doom. Publishers and possible investors wondered: “How safe will our stock be? How will we be paid? How can […]
Bafana Khumalo=20 Native Tongue=20 I should have let the son of a female dog be. I really=20 should have let him walk past me as I stood at the Civic=20 Theatre foyer trying to convince my dearly beloved that I=20 was the most important person in that theatre — that with=20 a flick of my […]
Julian Drew IT is early morning in Johannesburg’s trendy suburb of=20 Yeoville. I venture into the street and am greeted by=20 three blond Swedish girls. “Can you tell me the way to the=20 Pink House?” they ask in chorus. “Just follow the yellow brick road,” I am tempted to say.=20 But this is no fairy […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin=20 THE title of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, which is about the real- life film-maker Edward D Wood Jr, is perhaps a play on the=20 word Hollywood (a name we see emblazoned more than once on=20 the famous Beverly Hill) as well as a reference to his own=20 Edward Scissorhands (1990) which, like […]
CINEMA: Digby Ricci THAT acerbically brilliant novelist and essayist, Brigid Brophy, once titled an essay on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: “A Masterpiece, and Dreadful”. The “dreadful” aspects, inevitably, provoke the most enjoyable and unabashed tears: Marmee’s long- suffering, instructive “storytelling” (“So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed”), Beth’s affectionate […]
Despite its small size, Malawi sparkels with quickly=20 accessible variety, writes Stephanie Nettell FOR a while the road south from Lilongwe, Malawi’s spacious=20 but somehow amiably suburban capital, closely follows the=20 Mozambique border. On its right are the remains of=20 pathetically blasted dwellings, on its left neat undamaged=20 huts — but they are empty and […]
Nicholas Lezard WHEN asked “Read any good books this year?”, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernires (Minerva) is the one that has most consistently sprung to mind. It is a story of the Italian occupation of Cephallonia in World War II — a conventional historical epic, it’s the kind of book you’d take on […]
His body told him it was tired but the messages on Shaun Meiklejohn’s arms helped him to victory in the Comrades Marathon ROAD RUNNING: Julian Drew A CURSORY glance at many photographs of Shaun Meiklejohn could present the newly crowned Comrades Marathon champion as a trendsetter in the sphere of body adornment. As was the […]
HAZEL FRIEDMAN, a rookie recruit to the Internet, ventures into the cyber-art world – — but decides that, after all, there’s nothing like the real thing I AM haunted by a serial nightmare. I’m travelling through space on a surfboard, when this little guy — a brunette John Denver – — flies up to me […]
THEATRE: Bafana Khumalo THE first time I saw Welcome Msomi’s Umabatha was over 20 years ago. The play was well-marketed to the township schools’ audience, and we paid the princely sum of 10 cents to go to the open-air Jabulani Amphitheatre in Soweto. For that we were rewarded with an afternoon out of the classroom, […]
Gary Cummiskey=20 SOUTH AFRICAN REVIEW 7: The Small Miracle edited by Steve=20 Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (Raven Press, R49,99)=20 THE Small Miracle is a compilation of essays and the sequel=20 to The Long Journey, which traced the story of Codesa I and=20 II. This wide-ranging new volume focuses on events and=20 issues from Codesa to […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin BOTH Just Cause and Captives are set in prisons, one in London, the other in the Florida Everglades. In Just Cause, directed by Arne Glimcher, Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery), a retired lawyer, comes into a district that is insular and hostile to his cause, which is to investigate the murder and rape […]
Welcome Msomi, creator of Umabatha, in The Mark Gevisser Profile The divine justice of it all. When Welcome Msomi took his “Zulu Macbeth” to New York in 1979, he found it boycotted by the African National Congress and its supporters, who claimed that because it was “ethnic” (Zulu costumes, Zulu language, Zulu dancing), it had […]
Eddie Koch IN a bold move to clamp down on venality in public office, the African National Congress has decided its MPs must open their family assets and extra- parliamentary earnings to full public scrutiny. The dramatic decision — possibly a first for any political party in the world — coincides with efforts by the […]
Trade unions are planning a major offensive against the new Labour Relations Bill, reports Eddie Koch ORGANISED labour flexed its muscles this week as talks between trade unions and employers over the new Labour Relations Bill headed for deadlock. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will hold an emergency executive meeting at the […]
The government will be publishing its White Paper on Arts and Culture in the new year. HAZEL FRIEDMAN finds out what’s in store for IT doesn’t take soothsayer’s skills to predict the contents of the government’s White Paper on Arts and Culture, which will be released in the new year. Simply refer to the first […]
The festival of theatre at the Market Lab this weekend opens windows into a range of communities. David le Page reports THE wealth of plays at the Market Laboratory’s Community Theatre Festival this weekend represents an outpouring of imaginative energy that could leave those whose only regular creative act is choosing a title at the […]
FINE ART: Ivor Powell THE Bag Factory studio complex in Fordsburg might one day serve as a parable of the new South Africa — a parable whose point is how unusual normality is in this curious country of ours. The Bag Factory has no real agendas. It provides studio space for professional artists, and just […]
Puppets will magic away the mundane conventions of teaching science in an innovative multimedia series starting on NNTV this week, writes David Le Page A MULTIMEDIA approach to primary science education developed entirely in South Africa, and already acclaimed overseas, is to be launched today with the broadcasting of the first of thirteen half-hour episodes […]
The government’s brave new housing loan scheme will bring houses within the reach of the poor, writes Gaye Davis A YEAR to the day after Joe Slovo first walked into the Ministry of Housing to give it the shake-up of its life, his successor, Sankie Mthembi-Nkondo, could this week announce a June 5 start for […]
South Africa can draw upon a wealth of international experience of truth commissions, writes Eddie Koch SOUTH Africa is not the only country to scour its past in a cathartic endeavour to uncover details about human rights abuses. There have been at least 15 truth commissions in 13 countries over the last 20 years, and […]
THEATRE: David Le Page FARCE in South Africa has come to mean, typically, an=20 evening of imported bourgeois Anglo-Saxon capers –=20 romantic, sexual and ridiculous. However, the Anglo-Saxons=20 are not deeply into muti, and so they’ve never been=20 inspired by a love potion called Afrodizzia to an evening=20 of leap-frogging, overlapping and incongruous infatuations.=20 But […]
Stefaans Brummer DEPUTY Minister of Constitutional Affairs Mohammed Valli Moosa this week intervened in the border dispute between Eastern Transvaal Premier Mathews Phosa and Nothern Transvaal Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi. It is understood Moosa’s move to resolve the dispute over Bushbuckridge — part of the former Lebowa and Gazankulu homelands at present demarcated in the Northern […]
Moveable Feast Jean-Pierre Rossouw OF course, food should mix with art and wine at every=20 street corner of the Cape. Unfortunately, this is a popular=20 legend that no longer holds any reality. It may have been=20 true a couple of decades ago, but we Capetonians have to be=20 honest, and say that much now rides […]
Frank Chikane, a behind-the-scenes slogger rather than a front-row forward, is the favourite to head the truth commission, reports Gaye Davis LIBERATION theologian Frank Chikane, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), is the front-runner to head up South Africa’s truth The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, passed by […]
Government’s first serious effort to go on-line has begun, writes Bruce Cohen South Africa’s constitution-makers have hitched a ride on the information superhighway. This week, a large database of information relating to the deliberations of the Constitional Assembly was established on the Internet, the global electronic network. The service will contribute to making the process […]
With the opening match against the formidable Australians=20 less than a week away, the South=20 African team is buckling down to the task ahead RUGBY: Jon Swift IT is ironic that a game which was for so long considered a=20 symbol of the repression of the aspirations of this=20 country’s citizens should have assumed such […]