The annual Springbok Dinner will be a red carpet affair this year as we welcome the World Cup winning squad and coach Jake White to London to celebrate our recent victory with South Africans in the UK. This year the Springbok Dinner will be held at Madame Tussauds on 29 November - when our real life celebrities will stand alongside waxworks of the world’s most famous icons, including our own Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu.

The evening will be filmed for South African television. Don’t miss this chance to dine with the Boks! Book at Springbok Supporters Club UK website.

South African rock chick Karen Zoid is officially launching her new album Postmodern World on Top Billing in South Africa this evening. But if you can’t wait for your Christmas stocking, you can listen to four of the new songs for free on www.myspace.com/karenzoid. You can also buy the entire album on iTunes - hoera! South African music finally goes online! Listen for Aeroplane Jane, which has been widely playlisted by South African radio stations this week.

The SA Times team went to see Pieter-Dirk Uys in Evita for President at the Tricycle Theatre last night. We celebrated his return with a pre-theatre Nando’s down the road and pitched up expecting belly-ful of laughs and brandishing our VOTE FOR EVITA badges. Imagine our disappointment when we learnt the show was cancelled … poor Pieter has laringitis!

Nonetheless we stuck around for a few bottles of wine and Pieter joined as for a very quiet cup of herbal boereraad. He whispered his promise to be back on stage within a day. Feel better Pieter!

For those of you planning on checking out the show, SA Times is offering our readers HALF PRICE tickets for Thursday 23 and Friday 24 August - click here for details. And let us know what you think …

The star of Carmen Jones, which has just opened at the Royal Festival Hall in London, is the gorgeous Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi from Johannesburg. Leading an all-black cast, she turns up the temperature in this jazzy reworking of Bizet’s opera.
The story is transported to America’s Deep South: instead of working in a cigarette factory, Carmen works in a parachute factory, while her obesessed lover Joe (Don José) is about to undertake pilot training for the Korean War. The dashing toreodor Escamillo is reinvented as the boxer Husky Miller.
Most of Bizet’s music, however, stays untouched and the London Philharmonic (alternating with the Philharmonia) literally takes centre stage - the players are sunk into the centre of the stage, with the action fluidly moving on the three-level stage around them. The effect is an energising mix of colour and movement, conjuring up sensual Latin nights and causing the eye to constantly flick around the set in search of hidden action, rather than staying trained on the main characters.
At times this makes it hard to follow the dialogue and catch the finer quips – but it adds a gritty real-life edge.
Maswanganyi with her wild hair and long legs is a seductive and mesmerising femme-fatale as she prowls gracefully around the stage. However, when it comes to vocals, she is clearly upstaged by Sherry Boone who plays Joe’s faithful girlfriend Cindy Lou. Nonetheless, it is a London debut to applaud and us South Africans in the crowd were proud to own her as one of us!
The salsa-inspired choreography gets the feet tapping and all and all this is a wonderful night at the newly refurbished South Bank Centre.
Watch SA Times for an interview with Maswanganyi.

Rock star Annie Lennox has gathered 23 fellow female artists to create a song that will raise awareness of the Aids epidemic in South Africa – specifically the need of treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
The song “Sing” features the Treatment Action Campaign choir “The Generics” and 23 fellow female artists including Madonna, Angelique Kidjo, Joss Stone, Celine Dion, KD Lang, Fergie and Gladys Knight.
It will be included on her album due for release later this year and proceeds will be donated to the TAC.
Lennox recently visited Khayelitsha in Cape Town and spoke to Health-e – you can read the interview here.
She is only one of many celebrities passionate about making a difference in South Africa. Apart from King Bono and Prince Harry (who we all know has a specific interest in Southern Africa), look who we recently spotted supporting charity work in our country.

That’s right, Jude Law (pictured here with representatives from SA Times and the SA High Commission) recently attended a concert by the Young Zulu Warriors at South Africa House in London. He actively supports the KwaZulu-Natal-based charity God’s Golden Acre and told SA Times he so enjoyed the time he spent out there recently that he plans to return in December.
Ex-wife Sadie Frost introduced the last performance of the Young Zulu Warriors’ UK tour at St Mary’s Church in Edgware Road last Wednesday.

We went to see the London debut of The Chilli Boy at the Jermyn Street Theatre in Piccadilly last night - what a laugh!

It’s a one-man show but actor Matthew Ribnick transforms himself into about seven characters - ranging from an old Indian woman to a young Afrikaans thug - morphing from one into the other using only the slight hint of a cap or a sari to help convey the change. His use of physical space, facial contortians and spot-on accents are brilliant and he is an expert at keeping the audience’s attention.

The story is about an old Indian woman who after her death is reincarnated as a white gangster from Boksburg. This oke is tough, no one messes with him and he and his gang has a good “working relationship” with the local “Lebs”. But then one day he starts getting flashbacks from his previous life - his maternal instincts surfice and he no longer wants to fight, much to the consternation of his gang members, who worry about losing their tough reputation. He also starts cooking Indian food - much to the consternation of his Calvinistic racist mother who’d rather have a son involved in a brawl than a “gay” boy making her house smell of Indians!

Geraldine Naidoo’s script is masterful - together with Ribnick’s versatile acting they manage to bring to life almost the full range of cultural stereotypes we find in South Africa. And the dialogue is so sharp you’re doubled up with laughter for the entire one-hour run of the show.

It remains to be seen whether the British audiences will pick up the various local references that add much of the humour to The Chilli Boy - will they understand the Boksburg setting? Will they realise the huge divide between Patricia Lewis and Kwaito? Will they be shocked at the callous reference to crime? Will they laugh at the blatantly racist post-apartheid characters, or shuffle uncomfortably in their seats at the lack of political correctness?

It remains to be seen. But this is yet another fantastic example of how South Africans are bridging culture and race lines by learning to laugh at themselves and understand each other.

The show is almost sold out, but SA Times is running a 2 for 1 ticket offer for Thursday’s matinée performance at 3pm. Simply call the box office on 020 7287 2875 and quote “SA Times”.

If anyone has seen it - let us know what you think!