Ask the average business executive or key government official precisely what their company or department does and their brains fall out of their head and jargon springs to their lips. Frothy meaningless terms might be fine when you fall in love or during strong economic growth but they impede growth during economic downturns. And what […]
Charlene Smith
Charlene Smith is a multi-award-winning journalist, author and media consultant. She has had 14 books published, one of which was shortlisted for an Alan Paton award.
Television documentaries for which she has worked have also won awards.
She has worked as a broadcast journalist and radio-station manager. Smith's areas of expertise are politics, economics, women's and children's issues and HIV. She lives and works in Cambridge, USA.
Posted inBusiness
If SA can’t create 500 000 jobs, then your job is on the line
President Jacob Zuma says we have to create 500 000 jobs by year-end. As a nation of dedicated whingers, we look at that stat, sit back and say, “We can’t do it”. Actually if we can’t do it then we need to figure out how much financial pain, we the employed, are able to bear in […]
Posted inGeneral
Mother Nature and Father Greed
Mother Nature and Father Greed have both reached crisis at the same time, environmentalist Monica Graaff told an Institute of Directors breakfast in Cape Town last week. One businessperson at the breakfast challenged: “Why should business change when what is going to happen is going to happen regardless?” Two days later the Cape of Good […]
Posted inMedia
Is anyone listening? Getting value for radio adspend
Ad revenues are plummeting, which should see a rise in shorter, pithier, more imaginative advertising — but we’re not and it’s because the money-people at companies have stopped listening to the creatives. The financial crisis is seeing everyone trying to market better, but companies have also become more demanding and are more likely to use […]
Posted inLifestyle
The man who made miracles
Convention is the way in which ingenuity is corralled. Doing what others expect is too often not doing what we need to do to succeed. We conform, we try to be good people, we’re nice and wonder why our spirit battles to breathe. It’s only when we do what we need to do and bugger […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Obama’s US is the new rainbow nation: Africa needs to learn
Change may have been a long time coming, but when it did – wow! Sometimes revolutions come with pain, sometimes with joy. From today this is a new world and we all have to change the way we think and what we do. The first decade or two of any millennium is a time of […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Zapiro is spot on with his Zuma cartoon
South Africans do love to get their knickers in a twist, don’t we? The Sunday Times‘s Zapiro cartoon this past weekend had Jacob Zuma unbuttoning his knickers while Justice was being held down. I’m trying to finish a book, I’m late with three chapters and I keep getting asked — no doubt as someone who […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, Lifestyle
I’ve had it with the men in this country
I’ve had it with the men in this country and their Neanderthal views toward women — whether in relationships, from the judiciary or Parliament — the workplace or motherhood. Women constitute more than half the workforce in this country and overwhelmingly carry the burden of child rearing. There are more single mothers than women in […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
Great customer service creates obsessive loyalty
Tito didn’t raise the repo rate — hallelujah! To have done so would have been like throwing petrol (costly though it is) on to the fire. South Africa would have had a revolution. Salaries have not matched inflation (unless you’re a politician or corporate executive), which has gone up 10 times since 2006. On average […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Silencing the patriots: from UKZN to parliament the voices of freedom are under attack
Tyrants dance when the voices of civil society are silenced and in South Africa the band is starting to play. There are many reasons for disquiet; an array of laws have been lined up over the last two years focussing on curtailing liberties, particularly freedom of expression, and now the University of KwaZulu Natal is […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Rights, but no freedom — except for Tony Leon who is free at last, and great at it
Tony Leon is different now and yet maybe this is who he always was buried below the stress. Tony Leon on a public platform today is engaging, charming, witty, erudite and dare I say it – cute. This is a far cry from the leader of the opposition who often came across as belligerent and […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Telling extremists and rumour-mongers to get knotted
There is nothing like uncertainty and the fears it creates to give credence to extremists and to give their rants more attention than they deserve. South Africa at present is fertile ground for extremists; they’re all running around screeching that the sky is going to fall on our heads, but for radically opposed reasons. The […]