Posted inGeneral

Apartheid for better or for worse

I have fallen into the trap myself: become so outraged by government mismanagement that I wanted to beat them with the biggest stick I could: “It is worse than it was under apartheid!” Unfortunately, this is not what “worse than under apartheid” communicates to most South Africans. It is all too easily read as “better […]

Posted inMedia

Press clubs are for public engagement, not political intolerance

Following the fracas after Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson refused to enter the room or speak at a Cape Town Press Club breakfast until an opposition MP had removed himself, there is suddenly talk of the press club being some kind of front “infiltrated” by opposition politicians. ANC national spokesperson Jackson Mthembu, the office of the […]

Posted inBusinessTech

Nuclear is so Third World

Our government, it seems, may be dangerously close to repeating the e-toll fiasco with nuclear energy. As with e-tolls, by the time the pubic wakes up to its implications and how it effects them, the contracts are signed and the citizenry is on the hook for billions. Bad planning in energy needs is not unique […]

Posted inGeneral

Give me South Africa any day

Commemorating South Africa’s 18th year as a democracy this past week calls for a patriotic blog post, as does the e-toll interdict which delivered a sweet respite and an appropriate present for May 1 to the labour movement for exerting their right to protest. Owing to apartheid, I have never been much of a conventional patriot […]

Posted inGeneral

Letter to South Africa from Auschwitz-Birkenau

It has been pointed out by others that within living memory, Europe was the heart of darkness. So-called civilised Europeans, who read Goethe and listened to Beethoven, set about exterminating millions of their fellow human beings. These commentators also point out that in Africa no gas chambers and ovens were ever built, and some go […]

Posted inGeneral

Homosexuality is African

Anyone who says that homosexuality is un-African is racist. We have an enormous body of historical and scientific evidence for the existence of homosexuality in every culture on every continent and stretching back in time as far as the human record goes. Homosexuality may not be normal, but it is natural. The South African government […]

Posted inBusiness

An apartheid beneficiary’s guide to the budget

Who is an apartheid beneficiary? Anyone who was classified “white” under apartheid benefited from the system. Do we include their children almost two decades after apartheid was officially abolished? The answer must be yes. It is the moral stance. (German youth were faced with a similar dilemma. It took time. The first generation after World […]