{pp}“It’s a city of love, it’s like a mother, there’s love.” - Former District Six resident. “There is no hospitality here in South Africa, in Cape Town in particular.” – Congolese refugee.


Cape Town, like cities all over the world, brings together people from vastly different backgrounds. And, like other cities, it evokes a diverse range of feelings which reflect the experiences and memories of the people who live in it.

{pp}“Through the minute, seemingly marginal, ‘unfashionable’ groups and small movements, we very often find an exceptional route into unknown worlds and neglected, yet important, social processes.” – Shamil Jeppie, Language, Identity, Modernity: The Arabic Study Circle of Durban, South Africa

As author Shamil Jeppie wryly points out, a short study of a group of Gujarati-speaking men with an obsession to promote Arabic may appear a rather peculiar exercise. However, he continues, to take this view can impoverish historical writing in post-apartheid South Africa. As the new democracy develops, there is less urgency to look purely at politics and more space to explore the multi-textured events and movements that have been an important part of South African social history.

{pp}Is there a ‘dumbing down’ of public and intellectual discourse in South Africa or are you simply excluded from the society of debate? When survival is your modus operandi, is introspection as foreign as dim sum?

Or is the ‘dumbing down’ an idiom of overly intellectual writers; an unchallenged canon of discourse amongst academics who believe that readers lack sufficient vocabulary, comprehension, or thinking skills to even buy their books?

{pp}A laptop stolen in Johannesburg has been recovered and will be returned to the rightful owner within the next few days, this is thanks to a Johannesburg based anti-crime initiative.

{pp}New Hollywood blockbuster, Blood Diamonds, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has raised the hackles of many in the SA diamond and jewellery industry as well as questions about their integrity.

Though the diamond industry's response to the film's depiction of the trade in arms for diamonds - better known as Blood Diamonds- has been widely dispersed, our vocal jewellery industry appears to be avoiding the subject altogether. It would however seem, that the diamond industry response, though appropriate, has not quelled the tide of interest and concern that would fully sate the South African public.

{pp}In the first exhibition on British artist Julian Opie in South Africa, David Krut Projects will show several portraits from three of Opie’s most recent series of prints: ‘Ruth Smoking’, ‘Ruth with Cigarette’ and ‘This is Shahnoza’. These large, striking works show Opie’s clarity of line and colour – his use of primary colours and of bold black strokes – to startling effect. They also demonstrate Opie’s facility with different surfaces so that images produced as Lambda prints leap from the frame and screenprints on paper have all the desired tactility of their medium.

{pp}David Krut Projects is proud to host “Building” - an exhibition of photographs by Angela Buckland.

The artist gained esteem when she was nominated for the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Award for Creative Photography in 2003 for her photographic installation, “Where’s Nikki”, a frank exploration of the lived experience, marginalisation and stigma associated with rearing a disabled child.

[Pressportal.co.za] The NSRI has been saving lives on South African waters for 40 years. From its beginnings in 1967, sea rescue has fulfilled its ongoing mission with rescues that defy yet enthral the imagination, and feats of heroism that show the lengths people will go to help those in trouble.