Unforgettable white cat from Africa: RIP Tony Bird

TRIBUTE TO TONY BIRD RESEARCHED BY CHELSEA BARTON. THE SINGER/SONG-WRITER WITH the courage to apologise to Africa, who knew how to sing the songs of its landscapes, Tony Bird brought wisdom and activism to local youth before it was fashionable to do so. Considered by British music journalist […]

Farewell to Papy Groove

TRIBUTE TO MANU DIBANGO BY ELIZHAN DUVENAGE. CAMEROONIAN SAXOPHONIST, PIANIST, vibraphonist and composer, Manu Dibango, fondly known as Papy Groove, played an important role in innovating jazz in the last several decades. He was celebrated for his own brand of Afro-jazz, and cherished for his 1972 dance album […]

Of mice and ants, and being in the world

THEATRE TEASER: THE ADVENTURES OF MANIE THE ANT. JOHAN ‘SWANNIE’ SWANEVELDER is an alchemist. He has the potent ability to change objects as idiosyncratic and evocative, but also as commonplace, as a pair of socks, into sensate beings that can tell beautiful stories of great wisdom, humour and […]

Things in madam’s fridge

RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: DIE LYK. WHAT DO YOU do when you kill your impossibly annoying husband in error? This is the quandary that besieges Trudie (Elzabe Zietsman) in this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama, by Karin du Toit, which debuts tonight, 11 June, at 8pm on Radio Sonder Grense. […]

Predicaments of kingship

TEASER FOR A FILM: THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III. SOMETIMES A THEATRICAL production sails through your values like an absolute tornado. It tickles all your funny bones and gets the intellectual cogs in your head whirring. Mark Gatiss takes the lead of the 2018 Nottingham Theatre production of […]

RIP Ventura Rosenthal: Heavenly harpist

TRIBUTE TO VENTURA ROSENTHAL RESEARCHED BY MISHKA OLIVIER. NONA VENTURA ROSENTHAL, a brilliant musician and a true treasure to everyone who met her, gave a friendly and popular profile to the notoriously difficult-to-play harp. She succumbed to breast cancer, which she had battled since 2014, on 6 November […]

Raymond Louw: Master of integrity

TRIBUTE TO RAYMOND LOUW BY SHANEL SCHOOMBEE. A MAN OF his word, arguably the king of newspaper acumen in South Africa, Raymond Louw was fondly known as Mr Press Freedom. He was bold and brave in working with the press as an anti-apartheid instrument and a dedicated force […]