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Steve Kretzmann

Cape Town not immune to Los Angeles type fire disaster

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The city has better preventative measures but is far less resourced than Los Angeles

A devastating fire, such as the one that has raged in Los Angeles over the past two weeks, could occur in Cape Town, say experts.

In Los Angeles, a hot summer and autumn combined with an unusually dry winter, led to the vegetation in the hills around the city being highly combustible.… Read more

Milnerton Lagoon still stinks

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Years after the City of Cape Town was ordered to clean it up, residents say the smell is nauseating

The stench of sewage from the Milnerton Lagoon in Cape Town is nothing new, but it has been nauseating over the past weeks, say residents.… Read more

Dec/Jan gig guide – mense raak mal

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Hold on to your wallets peeps, it’s December holidays. Okay, let’s be real: you’re gonna have to shell out, but try not to hand it over to those capitalist bastards who would take the last 5c out of your credit card account and then sell your kidney to a muti mafia for the interest if they could, without even a single disturbed dream about it.
… Read more

Rail renewal: City plan unveiled

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The City of Cape Town first suggested taking over the passenger rail network in 2017, its investigation into how it would make this work is to being presented to council

Passenger rail, which should be the backbone of Cape Town’s public transport system, has been in decline for a decade under PRASA’s management, losing 159-million passengers since the 2012/13 financial year.… Read more

December gig guide – get yer bums out

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Summer’s here. Get yer bums out. Matric exams are done, and although the last week or two of work is dragging on, the time to jol is now, before the Christmas family obligations drag you to the salad bar.

Music

Salty songstresses The Fishwives bring their blues-tinged chords and funk-fringed beats
back to Cape Town to sing their poetry and like sirens dash us against their rock.… Read more

Outlaw love

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The Western is a well-trodden genre, defined as much by place and time as by character and plot. So much part of the American myth of freedom and self-sufficiency, it is arguably become part of the United States’s propaganda arsenal. Of course, we swallow it, for the most part, probably because the story of lone man battling nature and other men (it is almost always men in the Western) segues so well with the Greek narrative arc of journey, conflict, and resolution.… Read more

City’s heating up: More trees needed

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As global temperature records continue to be broken, cities need to move fast to prevent inhabitants dying from heat stress. Planting trees seems the simplest solution.

As global heating takes hold, Cape Town appears to be losing trees in the urban environment faster than they are being replaced, and the City’s Urban Forest Policy target falls far short of international recommendations. … Read more

November gig guide

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It is Halloween, brethren. Now, normally we would scoff at these northern hemisphere festivities celebrating the start of winter and the night on which the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Point of Halloween was to spiritually prepare for the fact the old and sick would likely not make it through the coming freezing months, thus it’s not applicable down this side of the world.
… Read more

October gig guide

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Woordfees, out in Stellies is wragtig impressive. It’s giving the National Arts Festival a runs for its money, and is much, much closer (but tickets are much, much pricier). Check it out if you can.

Theatre

An unusual love story, apparently, is It Went Above Your Head at Theatre Arts on the corner of Wesley and Milton roads in Obs.… Read more