Page 39 - Devon Koen News Today

With more than 250 productions, exhibitions, talks and workshops on offer, the 48th instalment of the annual National Arts Festival hosted in Makhanda has officially begun.

The lights are rigged, the sound is being tested and Makhanda is starting to see new and familiar faces in Frontier Country as the annual National Arts Festival kicks off on Thursday.

The grounding of all British Airways and Kulula flights to and from Nelson Mandela Bay could be a blow for the city’s tourism sector, but there is still reason to be hopeful.

The bleak reality of the drought has hit home in Jeffreys Bay, Humansdorp and the greater St Francis area and surrounds with water-shedding implemented from today.

Former city boss Noxolo Nqwazi won her first legal fight to get her job back on Tuesday after the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality consented to a draft order, interdicting the metro from appointing her replacement for 14 days.

The Eastern Cape health department has no choice but to immediately act on an unfolding humanitarian crisis at Gqeberha’s Livingstone Hospital after it emerged that service providers had allegedly not been paid for vital equipment needed to perform orthopaedic surgeries.

Police are at the scene of a protest in Hankey which saw several shacks at an informal settlement near the town being set alight on Wednesday night.

They allegedly squandered thousands of rand on alcohol while working in cahoots with others who have since turned state witness, and now three former Rhodes University staff members have found themselves in court to face a slew of fraud-related charges.

Former Theodor Herzl pupil and aspiring thespian Lufefe Kente is living his dream in New York where he has been selected to take centre stage in an upcoming off-Broadway production of Rent.

Mchunu’s trial was already postponed in January after he was diagnosed with a communicable disease.