It has been 46 years since the first Free Peoples Concert was held at Wits in 1971. Back then, as always, music was a way for everyone to imagine and be part of a different South Africa – starting on campus. It was South Africa’s Monterey, Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock; a platform for counterculture with music as [...]
He was a young god at the top of the world. From New York to London billboards featured the Blade Runner in his Flex-Foot Cheetahs – the carbon fibre legs that carried him to international fame. Nike, Clarins, Oakley, Tag Heuer …the leading brands of the world all wanted a piece of Oscar Pistorius and [...]
The New South Africa, where is it, you might ask. To find it, look no further than South Africa’s rising cult of stand-up comics. From the Jewish Xhosa Boy to the Halaal Doctor who chose smiling over surgery, they’re a diverse bunch of everything and they laugh raucously, which is the South African way. [...]
Botanical name: Aloe ferox Common name: bitter aloe, umhlaba (Xhosa). In 330BC when Alexander the Great conquered the Island of Socotra off the coast of Somalia, his aim was to seize control of the aloe trade for strategic military reasons. […]
In the Karoo there isn’t a whole lot of fresh-from-the-surf fish and seafood. There are takeaways that sell battered hake or deep-fried this and that, but I’m talking about the kind of fresh where you’re down at the harbour with seabirds circling overhead, waiting for the boats to come in. […]
Australian author David Mason-Jones is a cow man. He poses sensible cow questions such as ‘Should Meat Be On The Menu?’ and ‘Why Didn’t My Grandmother Get Fat? And why did I?’ […]
The other day I received an online survey asking “What do you think about avos?” It said that if I took the time to answer the survey I would be in the running for a bumper supply of the all green fruit. […]
“They’re taking over the world!” a resident from the country town of Middelburg in the Karoo stopped me outside the ‘Chinese shop’. She was whispering but it was more like a shout. “Look!” she said. I looked and I saw a bunch of Chinese people offloading a truckload of stuff and carrying it into the [...]
Two years ago Heather Dugmore swapped her life in Sandton for a farm in the mountains of the Karoo, where the cattle low and the only lights she sees at night are the lights of the stars above. […]
“It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!” In 1973 an American science fiction film called ‘Soylent Green’ pictured a future in 2022 when the world is suffering from [...]
