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Racists

“Jean-Louis Belavoix had stood up amid the applause that followed Bates’s exhibition, and had begun all at once to speak in a loud voice. ‘How absurd, Mr Bates!’ He called down. ‘Are we really to believe that men differ from each other simply because of the funny angle under their noses? Is that why the […]

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Where the textbook teachers?

By Athambile Masola I’ve been following the Limpopo textbook saga with half an ear. The furore unfolded while my learners and I were undergoing the arduous and exhausting process of mid-year exams. The debacle has been yet another crude reminder of the compromise of a constitutional right as well as the incompetence of the department […]

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Taking on ‘Gareth Cliff on Everything’

It is far easier to collect books than to actually read them. Recently, even the most bookish of my friends report some measure of difficulty in reading a book from start to finish. These are not people who have spent their lives eschewing books. Many of us spent our teenage years lapping up classics with […]