IT IS THE 1960s, the time of the border war that saw the South African Police head to head with cadres of SWAPO, in what is today Namibia. Simon (Dawid Minnaar) and his wife Mia (Gretha Brazelle) are fugitives on the road to safer, less war-torn pastures in […]
HOLIDAY TIME BECKONS and a young white South African family comprising two little girls, a teenaged son and their parents are readying themselves for their annual seaside vacation. Bessie (Simonè Benjamin) is but 19. She’s brown. And she’s employed as the family’s nanny. And she’s never seen the […]
SOMETIMES WHEN IT seems that the whole world is conspiring wickedly against you, you’re actually an arm’s reach away from a new chapter. And before you reach for the cross stitch to immortalise that legend, dispossess yourself of any silly platitudes as you tune in to the podcast […]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a gorgeous stranger pops into your restaurant for a casual burger and a stated desire for more? Is he a critic? Has he an agenda? When Louis (André Weiderman) presents himself at the restaurant owned by Lilian (Roeline Daneel), you think love is in the […]
THE BEAUTIFUL UNLOGIC and earnest hyperbole of a nine-year-old in conversation with his elderly grandfather starts this deeply wrenching play about sudden loss and unspoken words. Retief Scholtz’s work Karel se Oupa, was staged a few years ago, at the Market Theatre; it’s been reworked for radio and […]
HORROR STORIES OF interfering in-laws, told with earnestness and wit are so well trodden that they’ve become a cliché all of their own and there are a range of memes on the internet which describe them, both with humour and bitterness. Indeed, it’s seldom that a young couple […]
WHEN A GREAT story is told, it gathers together diverse energies, glues you to its ebbs and flows and allows you to walk away with its resonances ringing and rumbling in your heart and belly. Sometimes all it takes is a 90 minute foray into a rural landscape, […]
ISSUES OF BRAVERY and selflessness in 1300s Europe, with all its rivalry and gallantry, come under the loupe in Radio Sonder Grense’s weekly Afrikaans-language radio play this week. It’s an interpretation of Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 play Wilhelm Tell, and translated into the Afrikaans and featuring lots of nips […]
SOMETIMES ANGELS COME in rude shapes but at the right time in your life. And sometimes you have the perspective and wisdom to recognise them. Anders Geveer is a beautifully crafted Afrikaans-language radio play about the differences that make us human. It’s written by Sophia van Taak and […]
YOU SHOULD NEVER look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. And sometimes that gift horse comes in a surprising form. In Die Selle, this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama, which airs on Thursday night, Magda Retief (Karen Wessels) is a woman who lives on a South African […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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