As a travel journalist, you can wander the world, see all its peoples, taste 105 different kinds of ice cream and stomp through a thousand museums – but you know you’re always skating on the surface of experience. You’ve only had one layer of Life’s Onion. What a privilege it was then, for my wife […]

The next best thing to actually being in the Karoo, South Africa’s semi-desert Heartland, is to have access to the just-launched Karoo Space eBookstore. Download the Karoo Collection Sampler on your tablet or smartphone, find a shady spot somewhere and settle in for a tour of the most phenomenal people-friendly desert in the world. Travel […]

  Cold Harbour, the new South African crime thriller from the producers of Jerusalema, will have its world première at the Durban International Film Festival on 19 July before opening in cinemas countrywide on 25 July. The film stars Tony Kgoroge as Sizwe, an ambitious policeman from Khayelitsha who uncovers an abalone smuggling scheme while investigating […]

If you’re South African and of a certain age, chances are you’ll be familiar with the Silver Creek Mountain Band. Text & Pictures by Chris Marais The Creek is South Africa’s longest-surviving bluegrass band. Forty years ago, they were a live music force to be reckoned with. Two fiddlers, banjo, lead guitar and a big old […]

Johnny Clegg, Ross Learmonth, Yvonne Chaka Chaka and a host of other South African artists will gather together in July to remember musician Bongani Masuku who was tragically killed in an attempted car-jacking incident in Johannesburg last month. The concert will raise funds for his family, as well as awareness for Artists against Violence. It […]

The Franschhoek Literary Festival is one of the Groot Menere of all South African litfests. As authors of the Karoo Keepsakes series, my wife Jules and I normally hang out at smaller gatherings, like the Richmond Boekbedonnerd affair, the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival at home here in Cradock and WordFest in Grahamstown. In fact, we’ll […]

A video of a very smart “Honey Badger Houdini” in South Africa has been viewed over 21.7 million times as of 10 March 2020. (When this article was first published in April 2014, it had been viewed 1.5 million times.) The four-minute video of Stoffel the Badger’s great escape attempts is an excerpt from a […]

South African feel-good movie Felix has added to its long list of accolades by winning three more awards at international film festivals in March and April. The film won the youth jury prize for best film at the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth in Vancouver, Canada, the best film award at the Kikife International […]

I must confess that I’d never read much of Mark Gevisser before someone at work in New York brought me this book because it had Johannesburg in the title and I was a South African. They thought I’d relate. Which I did, except it was more to the title than to the author. At last, […]

In the week that Jack Parow’s latest album Nag van die Lang Pette is released, debuting at Number 1 on iTunes South Africa – he took some time out to speak to SAPeople… Jack Parow was born Jack Zander Tyler and grew up in Parow in the Western Cape. One night he was drunk, watching Pirates […]

Winnie Mandela, a film about the personal and political life of the activist and ex-wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, will open in South Africa on 7 March, the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) said in a statement on Monday. Starring Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson in the title role and Terrence […]

Casting real life gangsters in iNumber Number was a clever move; it turns the feature film into a believable slice of life that has caught the eye of Universal Pictures. The American movie studio has optioned the remake rights. It’s a fast-paced action thriller, in which the characters spiral into an abyss of corruption. In the iNumber Number world, the […]

A wonderful story of inspiration is unfolding in Empire Road and other streets of Johannesburg where a well-known South African storyteller has discovered an unknown book-lover. Three days ago South African director, cinematographer and storyteller Tebogo Malope (29) posted a video interview with an unlikely bookworm – 24-year-old homeless man, Philani. The story of the […]

South African author Anita Pouroulis has won one of children’s publishing’s top awards for her picture book ‘Oh, What a Tangle’.  The former primary school teacher from Bedfordview in Johannesburg won the Best World Children’s Book Award at the China Children’s Book Fair in Shanghai earlier this month. ‘Oh, What A Tangle!’ was released in the […]

Sigourney Weaver is the latest big-name star to join the cast of Chappie, Neill Blomkamp’s movie about a kidnapped robot. Production started in Johannesburg this week. Blomkamp, the South African writer and director whose debut movie District 9 attracted a best movie Oscar nomination in 2010, will direct Chappie from the screenplay he wrote with […]

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, the big-screen dramatisation of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, won the Audience Favourite Feature award at the Aspen Filmfest in the United States, it was announced on Wednesday night. The film beat a number of heavyweight contenders, includingThe Fifth Estate,August: Osage County,NebraskaandOne Chance, to emerge as the most popular film at the […]

Feel-good South African film FELIX – which carries  the message that ‘in every one of us lies a talent waiting to be shared’ – has aptly had its own talent recognised by winning the Best Children’s Film at a Festival in Germany. FELIX was selected from over 400 worldwide entries for the €7 500 award at […]

Award-winning South African author Marie Williams talks exclusively to SAPeople about love, loss, Green Goblins and discovering what makes your heart sing. Marie was recently awarded the Finch Memoir prize in Australia for GREEN VANILLA TEA, a heart-wrenching and inspiring memoir of the loss of her  husband Dom, a fellow South African. The two had […]

Nelson Mandela is regarded by many as a man of wisdom and insight – his words have touched and inspired people all around the world. Taken from Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations, we present some of the inspirational sayings by the former president that have roused and touched many internationally. The book, […]

Standing 6ft 4ins – 1.93 metres – tall, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is a giant of a man whose life will again be immortalised on the silver screen, this time with the focus on his earlier years through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. The political activist not only united […]

Former Capetonian Stelio Savante is making history in a lead role filmed in Equatorial Guinea. This is the first feature film to ever be shot in the small African country that’s usually more famous for its despotic regime than its movie-making industry.  Savante, one of South Africa’s top acting exports, stars in “Where the Road […]

Bruce Clark is one of those unusual things – a stay-at-home dad. In his uplifting memoir Love Sex Fleas God, aptly subtitled “Confessions of a stay-at-home dad”, he talks about his troubled childhood and his ultimately successful search for direction in life. The captivating title came out of a paragraph Clark wrote in response to publisher Umuzi‘s […]

This year, the music documentary about folk singer Sixto Rodriguez, Searching for Sugar Man, has been nominated for Best Documentary in 2013, the 85th instalment of the movie awards. It is up against 5 Broken Cameras, How to Survive a Plague, The Gatekeepers, and The Invincible War. The film, which was shot in Cape Town, has also been nominated for […]

“Searching for Sugar Man”, about two South Africans who set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, is picking up awards and new fans for 1970s rock ‘n roller Rodriguez all over the world. The title of the documentary takes its inspiration from one of the tracks off Rodriguez’ Cold Fact album, […]

South African documentary “Punk in Africa” has been selected for the 50th New York Film Festival. The explosive documentary about the role of 1970’s South Africa punk music in the war against Apartheid has been chosen for the Film Festival’s new “On the Arts” section. “Punk in Africa” is produced by Keith Jones and Deon […]