The hullabaloo around the award of the Freedom of the City to the Obamas (now accepted) reminds me of that remarkable day in September 2006 when then senator Barack Obama addressed a packed meeting at the Centre for the Book, organised and hosted by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the US […]
Barack Obama
Posted inGeneral
Yet again Palestinian leaders miss an opportunity
Immediately after being asked by President Shimon Peres to form a new coalition Benjamin Netanyahu stated that renewing talks with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority would be a top priority for his new government. “The next government that I will form will be committed to peace. I call on Abu Mazen (Abbas) to return […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How should we remember Zuma’s presidency?
History is a complex social construction but a few grand narratives tend to stick out. Among other stories we’ll remember Mandela as the reconciliatory president, asking us to throw our “pangas into the sea” and forgive. We’ll remember Mbeki’s poetic appeal to our African identity, an aloof renaissance man and, bitter-sweet, as the statesman who […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why SA demands a reluctant Obama
President Barack Obama’s re-election last week reminds us that the embrace of diversity is America’s greatest gift to the world. South Africa, like the United States, is one of the world’s most diverse countries with a similar burden of history of racial separation. This had led some of us in the small cocooned world of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The American Dream in a rough patch
It’s the American dream with an offshore twist. Although proportionately fewer than in 2008, foreigners in their droves supported Barack Obama in this week’s United States presidential election. The Gallup poll, of 26 000 people in 32 countries, found that 63% thought the US president had a high or very high impact on their lives and […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Obama and Mangaung
Truth never damages a cause that is just — Mohandas Gandhi And so Barack Obama takes the presidency. A congratulatory note to the American people for choosing leadership continuity. We must take this moment to recognise the smooth and painless electoral process that sees Obama with another opportunity to effect change domestically and internationally. Presumably […]
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The problem with Obama
Most of the world, with the notable exception of the miscalculating political leadership in Israel, is breathing a great sigh of relief that Barack Obama has prevailed over Mitt Romney. The vote for Romney was a negative vote, an anti-Obama vote. Of those voting for Romney many were not voting for the man, since it […]
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Framing Romney’s big-money politics
In the October 1 2012 edition of TIME magazine, James Poniewozik wrote an incisive piece of journalism on the imminent US presidential election – more precisely on Mitt Romney’s aspirations and the occasion of his gaffe about “the 47%” although Poniewozik concentrates on a different, to my mind, more telling aspect of the donor banquet […]
Posted inNews/Politics
SA should test presidential wannabes in live debate
The United States presidential debates – dating from 1960 and drawing about 60 million television viewers – are a sober affair, quite unlike the song-and-dance cabaret that President Jacob Zuma locally relies on to lure voters. This week saw first of three debates between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Though the […]
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Race underlies this race
Sometimes it’s shockingly explicit, sometimes it’s subtle, but it’s always present: There’s an undeniable racial undertone to this year’s US presidential contest between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Part of it is structural: Most Americans are no longer white. This year, for the first time, Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, and Native Americans together outnumber […]
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Refugees, the American dream and a war for Cape freedom
By Shafinaaz Hassim It seems as though, just like tragic Alice in Wander-land, we’ve all fallen down some obscure rabbit hole in South Africa. It’s not impossible, given our national heritage of mining shafts, and it must have happened at some point during the last few weeks while toyi-toying in Twitterville or outside the ConCourt […]
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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 […]