Early last year I complained that the DA’s image was too rich, too old, too white. I wrote, “Clearly brand DA is in need of a major overhaul, a major injection of cool. Its fusty look is rather reminiscent of what Woolworths was like 10 or 15 years ago when people under 30 refused to […]
Alexander Matthews
Alexander Matthews is the editor of AERODROME, an online magazine about words and people featuring interviews, original poetry, book reviews and extracts. He is also a freelance writer, covering travel, culture, life and design. The contributing editor for Business Day WANTED, his journalism has also appeared in House and Leisure, MONOCLE, African Decisions and elsewhere.
Contact Alexander here: alexgmatthews(at)gmail.com
Posted inGeneral
Zimbabwe heading towards a Rwandan genocide
Once upon a time there was an African country that after several years of instability seemed to be moving shakily towards reform and democracy. Its ageing despotic president had signed a power-sharing deal with the opposition that created a unity government that would precipitate a new constitution and elections. Sounds rather like Zimbabwe, doesn’t it? […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Massacres, forced labour in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields
Military control over diamond mining in Zimbabwe’s eastern Marange district has resulted in a brutal mix of massacres, forced labour, beatings and rape. This is according to a comprehensive report released last week by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based rights NGO, which interviewed over 100 people in the region in February 2009. Mining […]
Posted inGeneral
Zim government of national unity a failure
Let’s face it: more than three months since its inception, Zimbabwe’s so-called government of national unity is a failure. This is a unity government in all but name. Oppression and coercion is embedded within its architecture, with the impotent opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) serving as little more than a legitimising mechanism for ruling […]
Posted inGeneral
ANC will savage any opposition in its bid for perpetual rule
The ANC’s plans to destabilise and distract Helen Zille from fulfilling her duties as premier shows the contempt that our ruling party has for democracy. After several years of the ANC’s chaotic mismanagement and paltry delivery, the Western Cape’s voters decisively elected the DA to run the province. In moves startlingly reminiscent to its repeated […]
Posted inMedia
South Africans must speak out
On Freedom Day, to celebrate fifteen years of democracy, I launched The Soapbox — a nonpartisan online platform where young South Africans can speak out about things they feel strongly about. Why? Because South Africa is at a crossroads. Now more than ever is it important to use our freedom to ensure that democracy prevails […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Two-thirds gevaar’ reasoned, not racist
In a recent ANC Today post, President Kgalema Motlanthe rehashes an article he wrote in the run-up to the 1999 elections in which he criticised the then DP’s calls to prevent a two-thirds majority as “a fear of democracy”. In that decade-old piece he said: Lacking a coherent or realisable vision for a better South […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Debunking the Daily Mail’s doomsayer
On Sunday 29 March, a devastating article by Peter Hitchens on Jacob Zuma and South Africa’s future was published in Britain’s Daily Mail. Couched in a sickening, sensationalist discourse swirling with racist and colonialist undertones, the story employed gross misrepresentation, selective truth-telling, distortion and stereotyping to depict South Africa as about to collapse into the […]
Posted inGeneral
Zuma shall govern …
Let’s face it, come April, the great man will be state president. Rumours abound that the NPA is set to drop the case against old JZ. He must be dancing — it wasn’t necessary for his umshini to be brought to him, after all! Slavish Zuma loyalists like to paint objections to the man’s accession […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why African leaders can’t solve the Zimbabwe crisis
Robert Mugabe has no intention of relinquishing power. He’s even said as much. And this is merely confirmed by the ongoing abduction, incarceration and torture of opposition activists and a bloody-minded refusal to share key ministries in the proposed unity government. The SADC (Southern African Development Community) is only too aware of the Zanu- PF […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Two-year-old released after three-month imprisonment
Yesterday morning I wrote about the imprisonment and torture of Nigel Mutemagau. There is an update to this story: he has been released! According to today’s main story posted on The Zimbabwe Times, the two-year-old toddler incarcerated and tortured at the notorious Chikurubi Prison was released on Tuesday afternoon. He has spent three months imprisoned; […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Two-year-old child tortured in notorious Zim prison
There are no limits to the brutality that Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF government is prepared to employ in ensuring its continued grip on power. Recently, human rights activists and opposition supporters were abducted and thrown into the notorious Chikurubi Prison. Here they have been subjected to torture and beatings. Very little food has been provided. They are […]