Tag: Christiaan Olwagen

Ode to all the Poppies in our midst

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CLEMENTINA MOSIMANE SHIMMERS with magnetism in Poppie Nongena, Christiaan Olwagen’s beautiful and rich translation of arguably one of South African literature’s more important novels. Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena was crafted by Elsa Joubert in 1978, and in bringing to life a character who becomes an evergreen black […]

Secret weapons

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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 […]

In love under a dangerous open sky

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THE COMPLEX AND oft blood-stained plight of people with sexual proclivities that digress from hetero-norms has waxed and waned for centuries all over the world. Queer people have alternatively been persecuted, raped, murdered and deemed illegal in society, as they have been embraced and lionised, before the circle […]

Drive my car

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THE ACHIEVEMENT OF theatrical perfection is very rare. And when it happens, you have to grab it with both hands, and make a point of seeing it, whatever it takes. The Afrikaans rendition of the 1989 American story of an elderly white woman and her black driver seems […]

Death of a golden boy

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Sometimes you just know that a film will most likely not break box office records, not in this generation, at least, but that this market-centric prediction has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on its brilliance, its historical merit or its importance as a piece of research. Johnny is nie […]