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Wim Botha, Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year winner for Visual Art is erudite and reserved, accommodating and wary, as he talks about his exhibition Premonitions of War on display at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. “I work with art history, but not Art History as an academic discipline”, explains Botha. He draws on iconic and venerated images from art and religion over the ages, “things that people perceive as being great” he says, “for whatever reason. Read the rest of this entry »

By mixing sunlight with imagination the students from the Ningizimu School for children with mental handicaps have created magic, finding treasure (Umcebo) in the rubbish and debris of daily life. Read the rest of this entry »

In Hostile Takeover, three characters, played by Martin le Maitre, Lindelani Buthelezi, and Mpho Molepo, meet over a freshly dug grave and what ensues is a strange kind of debate about Black Economic Empowerment, the new South African economic policies, religion, morality; “It’s very very contemporary, right on the nub of this weeks ANC stories, and its comic, and strange and perverse and very dark humour”, explains Purkey. Read the rest of this entry »

Women from the Hamburg region of the Eastern Cape have taken the fabric of their daily lives and literally woven a tapestry of hope so rich and so magnificent that it dominates the quiet interior of the Grahamstown Cathedral. The Kesikamma Altarpiece, which is in Grahamstown for the 2005 National Arts Festival, is a product of the Keiskamma Arts Project. Read the rest of this entry »

In the vastness of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, a story is being written in the wilds. The authors are the animals, the wind, the trees and the myriad of creatures that live in the park. Very few people can read this story and decode the meaning of the smallest, subtlest signs of the wild.One man who could was Karel Kleinmann, popularly known as “Oom Vet Piet” Read the rest of this entry »

Barbara Mayer, a retired teacher from Hawaii, arrived in South Africa a few weeks ago as part of a programme called Teachers Without Borders.Mayer has come out to South Africa as part a group of 6 maths and science teachers who will lead teacher workshops at 3 different locations within South Africa; Vereeniging, Port Shepstone and Umtata. Read the rest of this entry »

In the words of poet Don Maclennan, ” winter sunlight, clean as a cut orange” shines down on the Karoo landscape and the exuberant display of winter flowers that have temporarily transformed the face of the Tankwa Karoo National Park. The 85 000 hectare park protects one of the most starkly beautiful tracts of the Tankwa Karoo. It teems with life and character, from the dramatic landscapes, wide silences, eccentric richness of plant diversity, rare and prolific birdlife and the sense that time was born here, and with time, life. Read the rest of this entry »

Sibongile Masuku Van Damme is a conservationist, poet, educator, healer, leader, scholar and philosopher. She answers my simple questions with responses that probe, think, listen, expound and explore. I’m not surprised she lists caving as a pastime, intrigued as she is by the language of Foucault, the dynamics of the mind and the strength of tears. Read the rest of this entry »

History is full of stories about epic journeys, literal and metaphoric. Think Marco Polo, think Tenzing Norgay and Sir Ed, think Nelson Mandela. And there are a fair number of epic elephants around too-think Dumbo, Ganesh…the Magnificent 7.There are even stories about epic journeys that involve elephants. Read the rest of this entry »

Vaalbos National Park is on the move from its current location near Barkley West in the Northern Cape, to an area south west of Kimberly, currently known as Wintershoek. Along with the move comes a new name (yet to be announced) and essentially a new national park. The move involves huge logistical operations, including the translocation of about 1200 animals, and the establishment of new facilities. Read the rest of this entry »