From JhbLIve Newsletter 27 May 2010: Johannesburg’s creative minds are gearing up for a six-week long extravaganza of arts, culture, entertainment and literature. The Newtown Festival is set to showcase to visitors, both local and international, the finest that South Africa has to offer.   This cultural festival offers an array of goodies throughout June and [...]

All you need to know in new
2010 Fan Guide 
Tuesday, 04 May 2010 From SA GoodNews
With less than 40 days to go until kickoff, the 2010 Fifa World Cup Organising Committee has released a comprehensive, easy-to-read 92-page guide to the tournament, packed with practical information on stadiums, host cities, fan parks and much more.     There’s useful information [...]

A team led by Professor Lee Berger, a renowned palaeoanthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (aka Wits University) has described and named a new species of hominid, Australopithecus sediba, almost two million years old, which was discovered in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, 40 kilometres out of Johannesburg, South Africa.   “Sediba, [...]

 Chris Thurman enagaged in conversation with Prof Philip Tobias world-renowned paleo-anthroplogist at the Boekehuis this Saturday.  In addition to his ground breaking work with hominids, Tobias has also been very influential as an anatomist, a geneticist, is an expert on medic-legal ethics and  … is a keen lover of cricket!  With a twinking eye and a razor sharp sense of humour [...]

From Maropeng’s February 2010 newlsetter
On April 10, Maropeng and iHominin will give budding palaeontologists a rare opportunity to explore a 1.5-million-year-old fossil site. Cooper’s Cave, 1.2km from the famous Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg, is a relatively newly discovered fossil site, where several species of animals and a number of stone tools have been found. The [...]

What went right in 2009Dec 30th, 2009
by Pierre De Vos.
(1) South Africa had another free and fair election (it’s fourth!) without any serious violence and the fourth democratic President was inaugurated soon afterwards.
(2) The government decisively changed direction on HIV/AIDS and President Jacob Zuma appointed a health minister who clearly understands that the problem [...]

The disastrous 2008 power outages in Gauteng and the recent announcements of shocking electricity price hikes, (45% for the next 3 years), bring into focus yet again the political nature of electrical power. There has long been a contest and tussle between municipal power supply and national power supply. The city of Johannesburg historically generated [...]

A bronze sculpture of a lone man seated on a chair and holding his precious saxophone, was unveiled on 25th September.  
Kippie Morolong Moeketsi by Guy du Toit and Egon Tania
Located outside the ‘original’ Kippies Jazz club in Newtown, and designed by Guy Du Toit and Egon Tania, a second empty chair encourages the spectator to [...]

If you want to read a gripping courtroom drama and get a sense of South Africa in the dark days of the late 1980s you cannot miss Peter Harris’ book In a Different Time. Published in 2008, Harris’ page-turning drama won the Bookseller’s Choice Award and the prestigious Alan Paton Award in 2009. The book [...]

A superb Johannesburg exhibition ends on Saturday 10th October. If you are local get there if you can. If you are an international traveler, contact Sally Thompson of The Thompson Gallery in Melville (info@thompsonsgallery.co.za  or phone on 011-482-2039) for access to Sally Gaule’s photographs of Johannesburg.   The Jo’burg Gini takes its title from the Gini coefficient [...]