Haban-a-killer, Haban-a-killer, Haban-a-killer … where is me glass? Sounds like a Jewish wedding … While Kobus Wiese was chatting to Corne Krige and Jeremy Guscott before the game, the butterflies were having a full go. Despite all the bravado I have to admit I was worried. That Argentinian scrum is lethal and so it proved […]
2007
Posted inGeneral
Exclusive: Johannesburg goes mad
Pardon me if this blog is interrupted by the sound of gunshots; intermittent power failures or typhoons, but I’m in Johannesburg at the moment. I lived here for seven happy years before venturing through the curtain of pallid stares from eyes-too-close-together in the dusty Karoo and settling in the Cape. Returning — as I do […]
Posted inGeneral
Apartheid impact: ‘Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious’
Oscar Wilde’s quote, which I like to qualify with Mark Twain’s “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Expedience, however, usually dictates that we follow that which we perceive to be in our own self-interest. The masses are swept along, being driven by the few, unwilling to […]
Posted inLifestyle
Have you started your own I-can-moer-my-kids-if-I-want-to stokvel?
Have you heard the latest from that congregation of wise heads who are busy formulating the new Children’s Act? Apparently if I should inadvertently (hypothetically speaking, of course) roundhouse-kick my son in the jaw and knock his back-chatting behind out, it will cost me R300. I hate hearing news like this because I’m never sure […]
Posted inGeneral
Let those street signs be praised!
(I swear I was composing this in my head before I read Matthew Buckland’s post “Name changes: ‘Cost argument’ is nonsense”.) I was driving home from Pretoria (sorry, Tshwane) last night, just before midnight. I followed the N1 south after Midrand, took the overpass that curves frighteningly (when it’s around midnight and you want to […]
Posted inBusiness
Classic price-control crisis
Browsing the website of the state-owned electricity producer, Eskom, where “loadshedding” schedules are published, is a depressing pastime for a sunny Friday afternoon. It’s a tale of woe that underscores the truth of the classic economic argument that if you control prices, you’ll get only shortages for your efforts.
Posted inLifestyle
Your interpretation, please …
I was walking along the beach in Durban not so long ago when the strangest thing happened to me. Well, one of the strangest. One of the strangest in a long while, anyway. It was one of the main beaches — Dairy, I think, or Bay, and there were loads of people about. I seem […]
Posted inNews/Politics
City council’s good response to storms is no hoax!
The storm hoax provided a funny reminder of how gullible some of us streetwise Jo’burgers can be. However, there was a real storm and real storm damage in parts of Johannesburg a few days before. In Lenasia — where I stay — the storm on Saturday evening left some parts of our suburb with substantial […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Tutu banned, unbanned
So the University of St Thomas has decided to withdraw its withdrawal of the invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at that esteemed institution. For people who have not been following the story, Tutu was to be hosted on the campus by the justice and peace studies programme, together with an organisation called PeaceJam […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Opposition politics: The worst job in the world?
I feel that I haven’t engaged in my favourite pastime in the world in a while; oversimplifying complex matters I don’t fully understand. I feel that I owe myself the indulgence. It’s a Friday, after all. I saw a guy driving a funeral parlour van the other day and thought to myself: “What a crappy […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
O Eskom! My Eskom!
I’ve cribbed the heading off Walt Whitman, the famous American poet who lived in the 19th century, because he probably didn’t have much electricity either. In “O Captain! My Captain”, a tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination in 1865, Whitman captures the mood of the American people — grief at the loss of their […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Does tribal history affect national destiny?
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe contemporary politics is about tribalism. The current division is not amaXhosa Mbeki-ites vs amaZulu Zuma-ites. Ethnic differences barely count in the contemporary clashes over succession. But, still, there is something about the history of the amaXhosa that just conceivably has a bearing on the way things are. The […]