Briefs

New online publications retailer

Oneworldbooks is an online retailer of social science publications. This online asset can be found at www.oneworldbooks.com where the searchable catalogue contains books relating to southern Africa and beyond. The wide-ranging subject areas include law, politics, governance, gender, HIV/AIDS and more. With its distribution centre based in Cape Town, Oneworldbooks is able to fulfil local, national and international orders. It allows direct access by the international social science community to primary and secondary research materials which have, up until now, been unavailable.

Browsers also have the opportunity to sign up for electronic alerts on new books and reports, and in addition to frequent discount offers, special terms are offered to resource centres, libraries and for bulk orders. For more information please e-mail info@oneworldbooks.com.

Play addresses taboo subject of witchcraft

The rarely addressed subject of witchcraft is tackled with great sensitivity in Echoes of our Footsteps, which is on at the Baxter Theatre Centre (Concert Hall) until October 9. Playwright and director Itumeleng Wa-Lehulere weaves intriguing storytelling with song and dance in a thriller-like format. Set in a present-day African township, the play tells the story of the victimisation of an innocent woman and how violence against women is sometimes camouflaged under the veneer of religion and traditional belief. Echoes of our Footsteps comes to Cape Town after a successful run at last year's Grahamstown Festival and the cast includes Joko Scott (The Shadrack Affair, Cry the Beloved Country), Stella Magaba (Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) and Nomkhitha Bavuma (Julius Caesar, Wizard of Oz). Bookings can be made through Computicket. For block bookings and charities please contact Sharon on tel 680 3962.

Kranenburg for Michaelis lecture

Rob Kranenburg, external advisor to the ad hoc committee on media education for the Raad voor Cultuur in Holland, will deliver a lunchtime lecture between 13h15 and 14h15 on October 6, titled Designing Hybrid and Creole Environments, in the Michaelis Lecture Theatre. He will discuss three space issues: pervasive computing and radio frequency identification; from privacy to privacies, and; demographic change and creolization. The basic argument is that the current intellectual and cultural policy climate in Europe and the United States is working directly against the challenges of new computing technologies, such as Unicomp, and the possibilities of building platforms for social innovation on them. He will propose that emergent territories such as South America, Africa, India and China have been accumulating an embodied and negotiated networked body of expertise that is becoming rapidly fundamental in understanding and designing hybrid (analogue/digital) and creole (mono-multicultures) environments.

Golden Keyers meet counterparts

Four UCT students - Paul Lamont, Nicolene Ramsunder, Suzie Robbie and Brandon Trew - and staffers Glen Anderson and Jerome September made their way to the international leadership conference of the Golden Key International Honour Society in Atlanta, US, in August. Students attended workshops around leadership, and got to compare notes with Golden Keyers - around 800 attended - from some 250 universities representing six countries. "It was a great opportunity to see how Golden Key is conducted elsewhere, to get ideas and network," says Lamont. "It really is amazing to go there and see what everyone else does." The South African contingent, which included students from the Rand Afrikaans University and the universities of the Witwatersrand and the Western Cape, made quite a name for themselves at the conference. The team won the prize for best war cry - students were draped in the SA flag and tooting vuvuzelas - and, in a special quiz, for coming up with the most interesting answers about Golden Key members from elsewhere.

Tour UCT

For the past 175 years UCT has played an integral role in the unfolding history of Cape Town. We invite you to join us for a tour of the historical precincts of the university to celebrate our 175th anniversary. For the month of October, tours will depart daily at 10h00 from Rhodes Gift post office on upper campus. The duration of the tour is two hours and includes a visit to the Hiddingh and Graduate School of Business campus. Bookings for the tour can be made by contacting Divo Khela at the Department of Communication and Development on tel 650 3759 or e-mail dkhela@bremner.uct.ac.za. Tours must be booked 48 hours in advance.

Month of Photography up for award

The Cape Town Month of Photography (MoP), a city-wide celebration of South African and international photography conceived by and run under the leadership of Assoc Prof Geoff Grundlingh has been named as a finalist in the 2004 Arts and Culture Trust (ACT) Awards. Grundlingh is director of the South African Centre of Photography, based on Hiddingh Campus. The awards are sponsored by the trust - a collaboration between government, the private sector and civil society - in association with Nedbank and the Mail & Guardian. The MoP has been nominated in the category for the most successful ACT-funded project, which pays tribute to those organisations or projects that have achieved a measure of sustainability and high artistic merit. Staged every second year, the third MoP is due to hit Cape Town in early 2005.