Inside, iThemba Labs, an experimental nuclear physics laboratory that excels in accelerator-based science, looks like Willy Wonka’s factory: vibrant yellow tubes connected to gleaming stainless-steel tubes, like a digestive system. But there’s no chocolate being produced here. You can’t touch, taste or see what’s inside. My guides into the mind-bending world of nuclear science are Kobus Lawrie and Gillian Arendse. Kobus, originally drawn to the intellectual challenge of nuclear physics, is research director of iThemba. With his mercurial blue eyes and a beard that looks well stroked, Kobus looks like a real scientist. Kobus’s wife is also a nuclear physicist who works at iThemba LABS. (I wonder if they discuss topics such as hyperdeformation and chirality over dinner …) read more

At 9am sharp, a minibus pulls up in front of my house with my guide, Greda, and driver, JJ, leaving Cape Town via the N2 in the direction of Khayelitsha. It’s Friday and the streets are full of people talking, eating and laughing. Our tour starts at Look Out Hill, the tallest sand dune that gives a panoramic view of Khayelitsha. Our local guide, Mteto, welcomes us with a warm smile and a hug. As I stand on the platform built around the dune, I can make out Gordon’s Bay, where I once lived for a year, Strand, Somerset-West, Mitchell’s Plain, the Cape Flats and Table Mountain in the distance. From this viewpoint the affluent suburbs seem next door to some of the poorest areas of Cape Town.  read more

The Unexpected Man is Tony award winning playwright Reza's exploration of the inner world of two travellers sharing a train compartment. Performed by Shaun Acker and Zanne Solomon under Brink Scholtz's subtle direction, the play is surprising gem as the audience yearn with the characters for a catharsis of connection. The Unexpected Man will be running first at the Intimate Theatre 7th - 12th and then returning to Alexander Upstairs from the 15th to the 25th of May. read more

Writer and director Darrell Roodt’s Little One (26 April) deals with the tragic story of a six-year-old girl (Vuyelwa Msimang) who was left for dead in a field near a township in Johannesburg and rescued by a middle-aged woman (Lindiwe Ndlovu), who takes her home where she looks after her as her own flesh and blood. The action comedy Blitz Patrollie (10 May) was written by Kagiso Lediga, with Joey Rasdien and David Kau as police officers stationed in a little-known depot in the belly of the Johannesburg CBD, until they stumble upon what is believed to be South Africa’s biggest drug haul in recent history. In Spud: The Madness Continues (21 June) Spud Milton (Troye Sivan) is aided by his English teacher “the Guv” (played again by the legendary John Cleese), to take up the fight against his housemaster who is determined to get the Crazy 8. read more

When a single mother is arrested for her part in an aborted IRA bomb plot in London in Shadow Dancer, an MI5 officer offers her a choice: lose everything and go to prison for 25 years or return to Belfast to spy on her own family. Written and directed by Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh , the comedy Seven Psychopaths follows a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved shih-tzu. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition in the futuristic epic Oblivion, Tom Cruise plays a man whose confrontation with the past leads him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind. A mysterious young woman arrives in a small North Carolina town and reluctantly finds new love with a lonely widower in Safe Haven, a deeply moving romantic thriller from Nicholas Sparks, the best-selling author whose novels inspired the beloved films The Notebook and Dear John. Lurking behind Alfred Hitchcock, cinema’s “master of suspense” – the extraordinary film icon known for orchestrating some of the most intense experiences of menace and intrigue audiences have ever seen – was a hidden side: his creatively explosive romance with his steadfast wife and filmmaking collaborator, Alma Reville. The brilliant Hitchcock stars Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren and takes you on a fascinating journey into the making of the spine-tingling 1960 thriller Psycho. Conducted by Daniele Gatti, the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screening of Richard Wagner's mystical Parsifal will see Jonas Kaufmann in his Met debut as the title character with Katarina Dalayman as Kundry, the mystical woman who tempts Parsifal. read more

Dawn Kennedy interviews author Roger Smith, who has shaken up crime writing with his visceral portrayals of Cape Town’s brutal underbelly. You grew up in Johannesburg but set your stories in Cape Town. Why? Well, Dust Devils is set mainly in KwaZulu-Natal, with a bit of Jo’burg and Cape Town, but, yes, Mixed Blood, Wake Up Dead, Capture and my latest, Sacrifices, are set in Cape Town, which is South Africa’s most schizophrenic city and remains fascinating to me. In the late ’90s (like a lot of Jo’burgers) I moved down to Cape Town. For a couple of years I lived quite happily inside a bubble of sun and sea, then I fell in love with (and later married) a woman who grew up on the Cape Flats and my vision of Cape Town had to expand dramatically.  read more

021’s editor Bernard Franz stays clear of beaches, prawns and Rum & Raspberry as he investigates Mozambique’s capital. Before I leave for Maputo, I get plenty of advice from my friends: Jerome recommends the fish market, where seafood goes straight from the sea via the grill onto a plate, with no sauces added; Senait reminisces about couples kissing and holding hands; Sofia, who is from Maputo, advises me to check out real estate on Ka Tembe, the sleepy peninsula just opposite Maputo, that is soon be connected with the city centre by a $750 million bridge; Moreira tells me about the lively music scene; Mark wonders if the bullfighting arena is still in use; Suzy fell in love with a sad gorilla in the local zoo, and Ryan, my neighbour, raves about the architect Pancho Guedes, who, in the 1950s and 1960s, helped transform the city into Africa’s most exciting architectural metropolis. Tristan Tsara, one of the founding fathers of Dadaism, remarked after a visit: “One has indeed come to the end of the world to find the most extraordinary things, a whole architecture of the imagination.” read more

Calling all fashion forward, freethinking creatives. It's design indaba 2013, and of course Maggs on Media was there. We’ll look at the mutually beneficial relationship between the event and its various partners, among them 021 Magazine, the country’s first carbon neutral publication. We also caught up with Dutch digital designer, Daan Roosegaarde, who surprisingly, does not see himself as part of the ‘Twitter generation’. Helene Lindsay from New Media Publishing talks pushy brand campaigns and content marketing done right, and after all that we swing by the Mini Time Splice machine for some fun and then talk business with the car brands’ General Manager, Kabelo Rabotho. Maggs on Media airs on Sunday mornings at 10:30 on the eNews Channel Africa (DSTV channel 403) With rebroadcasts on the following days: Sundays at 15:30 Mondays at 23:30 Tuesdays at 9:30 Fridays at 22:00 read more

Oscar Wilde said, “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” Is this why we drag ourselves off the couch, put on our best pair of jeans and haul ourselves off through traffic to watch adults pretending to be people they are not? Absolutely. In its infancy, 2013 has already blessed Cape Town’s stages with The Three Little Pigs, Die Suidooster Fees, the Maynardville Open-Air double bill and the Improv Fest. But brace yourselves, theatre lovers, as we are heading into a couple of months pregnant with promise, and bursting with young talent. From young directors, young performers, original and fresh work from new, exciting theatre makers to new spaces … it’s as though we’re celebrating the Mayans being wrong with youthful abandon and a new start.  read more

Teaching art in Cape Town, Mary-Anne Border had no idea that she’d be consumed by a new creative urge when she moved to Napier. “I think it’s because you can be the person you really want to be here,” explains Mary-Anne. “I’ve met some wonderfully inspiring people and that gives me added impetus to express things in a new way.” A year ago, Mary-Anne took up residence at the Napier Retirement Village – her house overlooks rolling countryside and gives her the vision she seeks. She loves the nature around her, even though she has done battle with some visiting swallows who took up residence on her stoep. She also loves the quiet. So her newfound activism contrasts somewhat with the serenity of her surroundings, but she’s lively in her freedom and happily saying what she wants to say through her painting. This societal commentary – all given from the comfort of her new home – has given Mary-Anne a new lease on life too. “I swim every afternoon with a friend in the solar-heated pool … and in all weathers … so I’m being active in every way and, as the saying goes: ‘I’m retired but I’m not tired.’”  read more

Tailor – Dark Horse Dark Horse is what happens when you pair a strong singer with powerful melodies. The Pretoria-born singer-songwriter has been performing since the age of 12 and started the band Mel-funktion at age 15. She was then Melanie Le Roux. In 2007 Melanie moved to Cape Town and became Tailor. Dark Horse is her debut album. It’s astounding to hear that half the songs for this album were written in a day. Tailor, who currently has one of the most powerful voices in South Africa, really shows off her range of vocals, going from a whisper to a scream effortlessly. The opening track perfectly introduces us to the album. She plays with genres like county, blues, folk and jazz, zigzagging between them like she owns them. The songs are dark, eerie and beautiful – take your time and listen to the lyrics, they show us her more dramatic side. A must for anyone who appreciates soulful female artists like Alanis Morissette, Patti Smith, and Tori Amos. Favourite track: “Why Don’t You Love Me” www.facebook.com/thisistailor @Thisistailor www.thisistailor.com read more

The last few months have seen violent strikes in the Winelands. Three people have been killed, vineyards burnt down, and access to wine farms and major roads was blocked. 021’s editor Bernard Franz talks with Mark Solms, a renowned psychoanalyst and Franschhoek wine farmer, about the sense of land, chicken for charity, and what it meant to him when a farm worker with a 7000-year-old stone tool declared, “My people were here before yours.”  read more

Nature rubs shoulders with the city in Karolina Olowsdotter’s fashion label. A Swedish fashion designer living in Cape Town, Karolina describes her label – Olowsdotter – as an eco-industrial look. This merging and clashing of contradictory elements expresses the duality felt by the 21st-century free-spirited nature lover who longs to feel the grass under her feet yet demands high-speed internet access 24/7. Ecological principles affect every step of Karolina’s design process. Supporting and affiliating with other local industries is a primary concern. She buys local fabrics, mostly organic, and uses only natural fibres, which she embosses with intricate design details, such as poetry screen-printed onto the fabric. The industrial aspect of her design comes through in the tailoring – the tuxedo style coats that reference a dandified life of high culture and the sharp lines with tucked waists that ask us to trade sandals for high heels. Rather than following fickle trends, Karolina designs clothing that emphasises the feel-good factor. “I want people to wear my clothes because they make them feel at home in their skin,” she says. And who would she love to see wearing her clothes? “Neneh Cherry – she's edgy, quirky and principled.” Karolina recently showed her work at Design Indaba 2013.  read more

Want to get away from it all? Dawn Kennedy discovers tranquillity – and Africa’s most dangerous animal – right in the middle of the city. Whoever penned the famous phrase about the journey being more important than the destination had clearly never tried to cross Prince George Drive during rush hour to reach Rondevlei Nature Reserve. Hands sweating, gripping the steering wheel tightly, I beep with fury, cursing the rush hour, the apex of our cultural madness. Battling through traffic, I fix my aim on Imvubu Island. Nothing signals tranquillity more than an island. The very word sounds like a sigh and makes me think of undisturbed peace. They say that no man is an island, but it’s on an island that we can feel most at one with ourselves. Perhaps, surrounded by water, we are reminded of our embryonic existence before entering the madness of this world.  read more

The earliest origins of isishweshwe (Xhosa ujamani; Afrikaans Duitse sis) can be traced back to the craze for colourful indiennes (Indian cottons) which spread like wildfire across Europe (even reaching the Cape) from the mid-1600s. In addition, vast quantities of indigo, until then extremely rare in Europe, were imported from India on new sea trade routes monopolised by the British and Dutch East India Companies. Europeans were now able to produce large amounts of a beautiful deep blue fabric. In South Africa the identities of its wearers have changed from its context in trade and missionary-inspired Western dress to its active incorporation into traditional African rural customs, as a political statement by white women against apartheid, to its emergence on the international fashion circuit and latterly also as accessories. Increasingly today it is worn as everyday dress by South African women, irrespective of class, and more and more by men. Today discharge-prints – in South Africa regarded as “real” isishweshwe – are made only at Da Gama Textiles in Zwelitsha near King William's Town. At Iziko, an exhibition entitled The Shweshwe Story: Material Women? introduces the greater part of a collection of garments assembled by Dr Juliette Leeb-du Toit over a period of more than two decades. These are complemented by a range of photographic images and a selection of historical garments and images from Iziko’s own collection. This is the first in-depth exhibition of isishweshwe. Opened in February this year, the exhibition also coincides with the run-up to Cape Town’s reign as World Design Capital in 2014.  read more