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Category: radio

Gossip and its discontents in Golgotha

AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA: DIE LËE GRAF SOMETHING RATHER EXTRAORDINARY happens to the New Testament narrative around the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ under the pen of Helena Hugo and in an Afrikaans radio drama. Die Lëe Graf tells the story of Easter from the perspective of Nicodemus […]

Ode to an orange tree

AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: DIE GOUE KRING A parable of citrus fruit and blindness, generosity and the plight of others, this week’s Afrikaans language radio drama, Die Goue Kring (The Gold Ring) by Uys Krige draws from Radio Sonder Grense’s archives and presents a tale of a prodigal […]

Moonshine and black coffee

AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA: AS ONS TWEE EERS GETROUD IS As you barge into the Van der Merwes’ household this evening, all the miseries of lockdown will miraculously disappear, albeit for just one hour. Tonight sees the start of Radio Sonder Grense’s Afrikaans-language radio theatre season, and the organisers […]

When the day turns dark

THE DIFFICULT AND lonely place that an illness without obvious visible signs brings remains fraught, to this day, with speculation and gossip, taboos and embarrassment. In this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama on Radio Sonder Grense, Man op die Maan (man on the moon), written by Helena Mellet, which […]

Ghosts in the machine

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ARE arguably the most complex and mysterious of objects invented. They can never just be objects. They can sing. They can laugh. They have identities and secret histories. They are beautiful and crafted and have a purpose which is about something a lot more intuitive and […]

Secret weapons

IF YOU WERE conscious in South Africa between the 1960s and 1990s, when the apartheid army held sway over South Africa’s male youth, the premises of Korporaal Lemmer en die Rowers, this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama on Radio Sonder Grense will bring swarms of goosebumps, blending army humiliation […]

Guys and dolls

OCCASIONALLY, YOU FIND a radio play which has the wisdom to splay open a socially controversial issue by engaging your intellectual muscle as well as all your funny bones. Doller as kopaf is a hilarious  and brilliant spot of social commentary, crisply focused and beautifully constructed around the […]

Cold turkey

WHAT WOULD YOU do if the internet got switched off tomorrow and all the little bits and scraps of your multiple engagements with different platforms of social media, the games you play and the relationships you’ve formed electronically suddenly vanished? Just like that. Writer Leon van Nierop takes […]

My one in a million

MURDER AND VIOLENCE have become so commonplace in South Africa these days that they often don’t make it to national headlines as they once may have. And in erasing the grand narrative from public awareness, the underlying personal tales of love and hope, of disappointment and stargazing get […]