Posted inNews/Politics

DA: A liberal party suddenly fearful of ideas?

“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie” – Yevgeny Yevtushencko Strange times these. A proposed non-electoral pact between the ANC, a party synonymous with the advent of South African democracy, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a party slavishly devoted to naked populism, would see them collaborating to evade electoral accountability […]

Posted inGeneralLifestyle

Escape velocity

The astronomer Fred Hoyle once observed: “Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.” Which is to say it’s twelve hours nearer to us than Cape Town is to Johannesburg. Imagine such a perpendicular journey: 100km above sea level we cross the Karman line — […]

Posted inNews/Politics

The liberal project and DA discontent

Those interested in the DA or inadvertently exposed to it would be aware of an on-going, often heated, discussion about the ideological underpinnings of the party and its political future. Contributors have included Gareth van Onselen (and again), DA executive communications director Gavin Davis and former party leader Tony Leon. There were also two pieces […]

Posted inGeneral

Lennon and Laing – kindred spirits

John Lennon and RD Laing – two individuals who worked in entirely different cultural fields; the one a singer, songwriter and pop star, the other a psychiatrist (perhaps experimental psychiatrist), writer and radical thinker of the left. What they had in common, was arguably the fact that they were both utopian visionaries, and both were […]

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 […]