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Historical monuments: an interview with Lize van Robbroeck
2017-09-06"There are ways of owning Afrikaner culture that is not sectarian and offensive."
The Wound: film review (kykNET Silwerskermfees 2017)
2017-09-04"When I say The Wound is transformative, I don’t use the word casually. With great care and respect, John Trengove and his team disconnect you from your world, and walk alongside you into a world foreign to most."
Press release: Open Book Festival programme 2017
2017-08-28The seventh Open Book Festival will take place from 6 to 10 September at The Fugard Theatre, District Six Homecoming Centre, A4 Arts Foundation, PH Centre, Central Library Cape Town, Elsies River Library, Kuyasa Library and The Book Lounge from 10:00 to 21:00 each day.
African Library: And crocodiles are hungry at night by Jack Mapanje
2017-08-25"This important narrative, like other well-known, earlier examples of African prison memoirs, many of them by famous writers, is a record of courage, friendship and enterprise in loyal league against the incarcerating, isolating and obliterating forces of tyranny."
Midlands Literary Festival 2017: Programme
2017-08-24"The seasons literally and figuratively turn the page from 2 to 3 September when the 8th Midlands Literary Festival, now something of an institution in Howick, takes place at Fern Hill Hotel, one of the jewels of the Midlands Meander."
Press release: Applications now open for the Baxter’s 2018 Zabalaza Theatre Festival
2017-08-23The Baxter’s Zabalaza Theatre Festival is calling for applications from theatre-makers, directors, script writers, community groups and theatre companies to participate in the 2018 Zabalaza Theatre Festival. The deadline for applications is 18 September 2017.
Karoo explorers: interview with Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
2017-08-23"Our latest book, Road tripper Eastern Cape Karoo, is what you will not find on Google about the people, the lifestyles, the snippets of history and the best hang-outs for travellers in this magical region."
Early one Sunday morning I set out and discovered South Africa: an interview with Luke Alfred
2017-08-23"I came from a walking and hiking family, so it’s a fairly natural activity for me. Walking gives you an interesting perspective into human time. I like its sense of scale and the activity’s meditativeness."
Press release: Jozi Book Fair 2017 programme
2017-08-22The 9th Jozi Book Fair takes place from 31 August to 3 September in Johannesburg. The theme is Women and literature.
Press release: Artscape/Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra Youth Music Festival 2017
2017-08-21"This prestigious annual event offers accomplished musicians the opportunity of playing with a symphony orchestra on a professional concert stage. The emphasis of the festival is that it is a celebration of young musical talent and not a competition."
A man of Africa. The political thought of Harry Oppenheimer: book review
2017-08-21"Kalim Rajab’s collection is a readable and even-handed account of Harry Oppenheimer as a reticent philosopher-capitalist, leading readers to view him within the limits and possibilities of his time, and to appreciate in hindsight the flawed nature of his legacy."
Video: Launch of On Record by Schalk van der Merwe
2017-08-18Schalk van der Merwe's On Record – Popular Afrikaans Music & Society, 1900–2017 was launched on Tuesday, 15 August in Stellenbosch.
Forty years after dawn
2017-08-17"State plans still dressed in torn overalls of parliament
Bullet speaks louder than ballot"
Die Mauer: A German crime thriller set in a South African gated community
2017-08-16"Annas has taken some pretty evident elements of the South African reality and mixed them into a breath-stopping brew: a wall, some 'intruders', a tinderbox socio-political milieu and a few overinflated egos that concern themselves almost exclusively with obsessively safeguarding the privilege contained within the wall."
The wisdom of adders by Dan Wylie: book review
2017-08-16"The story as a whole is set so far in the future, yet is so grounded in our connection to the primitive and natural world, that it conveys the same type of timeless appeal as Game of Thrones (although the latter’s genre is fantasy). For this reason, we can forgive the sometimes hackneyed feeling of the poems."
Press release: The Fall wins prestigious Scotsman Fringe First Award
2017-08-15"The play lifted a veil on the unspoken truth of so many thousands of students, their hardships, their realities; and the pain suffered by so many."
Losing the plot: crime, reality, and fiction in postapartheid writing by Leon de Kock: book review
2017-08-14"... De Kock, it seems to me, gets much right in Losing the plot. His preoccupations seem all the more relevant as we try to untangle the dense web of corruption in South Africa, decipher the shifty nonsense emerging from the White House, hope to differentiate news from fake news, and find ways of living in a murky world in which states have become indistinguishable from criminal enterprises and politicians from racketeers."
Atomic blonde: film review
2017-08-11"In Atomic blonde, they managed to find the coolest, yet totally eighties, outfits for Charlize. The styling and lighting as a whole are perfect. The Atomic blonde delivers a love letter to a cold, blue and grimy Berlin, five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall."
Apartheid: Britain’s bastard child by Hélène Opperman Lewis: book review
2017-08-10"I came to this book interested in inter-/transgenerational trauma, as a South African, and read it as a case study of the Afrikaner as a particular case of such trauma. I left unconvinced, which is a pity."
The Dalai Lama in Botswana: an interview
2017-08-10"A local neuroscientist from Pretoria, Karen Fitzgerald is one of the organisers of a conference that will be held in Gaborone, Botswana, which His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will attend. With this historic visit by the Dalai Lama, Botswana is his only planned destination in Africa."