Articles

GODFATHER of our Platteland Preview arts festival, Ismail Mahomed, makes his first visit to Smithfield this weekend. Our festival is directly linked with the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown because we invite performers, on their way to Grahamstown, to stop off...

We knew we were on to a winner when we saw David Butler as Bram Fischer: he opened the Platteland Preview festival in June with the premier of ‘Fischer’ in English and won rave reviews from local audiences, not to mention the awards he’s picked up for the show since...

WHEN government officials promise to consult over crucially important matters can they be held to their word? Or may they renege with impunity? A recent series of court cases show these questions are not as easy to answer as you might hope. In May 2012 officials from...

Ludwig’s Bustards are notoriously shy. And with good reason – they need every strategy possible for the species to survive. Their status has recently been upgraded from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Endangered’ on the Red Data List of endangered species and it’s thought that their...

EVERY afternoon, when I take the dogs for a walk, we drive past a local junior school. For many months part of the grounds has been a bright green contrast to the wintry khaki-grey of the neighbouring veld. But the green isn’t healthy. It’s where sewer drains have...

HERE’S a health warning: this story is full of WTF moments, as social media would put it. But read on – at your own risk of apoplexy – for some stark light on why the Eastern Cape, that most disaster-prone of provinces, lives full-time in the dwang. First, meet...

The earth is certainly moving for us today. It’s taken years of planning and now at last we have a digging machine (a TLB for those who know the jargon) to shape a small dam for run-off rain water at the end of the garden. There are clouds of dust everywhere, but we...

WANNA see for yourself that the police service has created a culture of crime tolerance among its members? Read on. There’s this guy, Victor Vass. A police warrant officer for more than 20 years. Now he wants to join the bomb squad. So he passes the psychometric and...

LIKE a curse, the Dorsland Trek, even today. First of these treks started in 1874 continuing sporadically until 1905. Families from the Groot Marico and Rustenburg districts suffered unbearable hardship as they trekked through the Kalahari, leaving dead people, dead...

TAKE a look at the behaviour of a bunch of politicians in the Northern Cape, and you can see how even the remotest parts of South Africa suffer from people who put selfish party interests above serving the people. Earlier this year operations of the...