Sometimes we really need to be reminded of the good things happening around us. As I write this May editorial note, people close to me are feeling rather disheartened about the future of South Africa and Africa as a whole. For once, the CLASSICFEEL team was spending more timediscussing the state of the nation than the latest cultural happenings – very unusual. The political turmoil during the last couple of weeks has unsettled all of us and it took this latest issue, our Africa issue, to remind us that there is actually a lot to celebrate on our continent!

25 May is Africa Day and our May issue reminds us why we celebrate this day. We had our regular article in our African Heritage series prepared when the news broke about another African discovery: the recent announcement by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Professor Lee Berger of ‘arguably the most complete skeletons of early human ancestors ever discovered’. Although Berger objects to the term ‘missing link’ –‘because’, he says, ‘evolution doesn’t work like a chain of events, one thing leading to another thing; its much more of a bush or a branching exercise’ – the skeletons are believed to be a new species, approximately 1.9 million years old, and fill a critical gap in theories on human evolution.

The news reverberated around the world and it once again shows what a fantastic area the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg is for researching our origins. This news should bring researchers and tourists to our country – long after the World Cup. Talking about that long anticipated sporting event, we have really been amazed by the high standard of some of the cultural events planned to take place alongside the tournament. The SPace exhibition, which will be on at Museum Africa in Johannesburg, is one such event. We saw artists like Mary Sibande preparing their work at the Joburg ArtFair. We
liked her work so much that we decided to dedicate our cover to her most recent piece and hope you find it as striking as we did.

 SPace is one of Johannesburg’s two official host city cultural events. The other is the Joburg Theatre’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton’s The Boys in the Photograph. We met the cast and crew as they began preparations for the show’s premiere, which, like the World Cup itself, is fast approaching.

We talked to Claire Angelique, 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist for Film, about her challenging and iconoclastic work; we met the young musicians behind a new opera initiative designed to prove that the art form is truly for everybody; and we talked to Kesivan Naidoo about his Jazz band’s African tour.

Forget politics, forget the cynics; it is all happening in Africa!

Lore

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