The DA is in crisis. A friend of mine at the University of Cape Town tells me that joining the party’s student wing, Daso, is social suicide. And as such, its reputedly attractive members are remaining unloved and unlaid — leaving me wondering as to whether alliances (democratic or otherwise) will occur to ensure the […]
2008
Posted inLifestyle
Why the acid?
The saying: “someone’s really acid”, contains more substance than one might think. It’s not only a result of being jacked off about something/someone, but can actually have a physiological cause. Those bad moods and snide remarks could be the result of an acidic physical make-up. Being interested in good health and exercise, I’m always on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
McCain’s repeal of the “Alternative Minimum Tax” shades of Gordon Brown’s 10p debacle?
Gordon Brown is set to scrap many of his proposed tax increases pursuant to threats of a backbench rebellion arising from the disaster that was Labour’s showing at the local and London elections. Not for voters Britain’s foreign policy or climate change, this time it was all about credit crunch, food and petrol prices and […]
Posted inTech
My love-hate relationship with technology
I have noticed a life cycle with my enthusiasm for any new piece of technology: At first I love it Then I love it some more, and start hooking up other people with it Then I begin to notice the bugs, which I try to ignore because the technology is so cool Then the bugs […]
Posted inLifestyle
Don’t blame fatties for being fat
Fat is enigmatic stuff and there’s literally much more to it than meets the eye. It was fat that first got me interested in nutritional health, one day stumbling upon Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill by Canadian Udo Erasmus who broke through the anti-fat fascism of the Eighties and Nineties (when all fats were […]
Posted inGeneral
Cometh the hour, will the man falleth flat on his face?
God love ‘em, the world could use more mavericks like Boris Johnson and Jacob Zuma. Keep your dull politicians, your people of note with their perfect pedigrees and coiffed scalps, honed in austere academies, planed and sanded at the finest finishing schools. Give us a world governed by floppy moptops, foot-in-the-mouth blunderers and sloppy dressers […]
Posted inGeneral
Tsvangirai would be as mad as Bob to stand in these circumstances
South African President Thabo Mbeki, having failed to query how Zanu-PF knew the result of the presidential election a month before the ZEC, and ignored all reports of murder, torture and intimidation which started immediately thereafter — no doubt in anticipation of the run-off Mugabe had decided on — has now advised religious leaders that […]
Posted inMedia
Towards a “world free speech day”
No one could disagree with a global day dedicated to “press” freedom, as marked around the world on Saturday 3 May. Under the auspices of UNESCO, and as agreed by the UN General Assembly a decade or so ago, the 3 May every year is “World Press Freedom Day”. An important cause, but the very […]
Posted inMedia
A year of media freedom violations
Kaitira Kandjii. Some Southern African journalists spend more time in the courtroom than in the newsroom, according to Kaitira Kandjii, director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa). He referred to a flood of defamation cases, including five against the Times of Swaziland. “One Malawian journalist has over 30 pending legal cases.” But Kandjii […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Games over, free Tibet
‘Games over, Free Tibet’ is one of the really good slogans coming out of the Free Tibet campaign. The campaign has got a lot of press recently. Mostly, of course, because of the useful insistence of the Chinese on parading the Olympic flame through cities in which there are a bunch of Tibetan exiles and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
More Manto than Manto
It’s really hard to take anything Peggy Nkonyeni says seriously. As MEC for Health in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), home to about one in four people living with HIV in South Africa and the epicentre of the global extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB epidemic, Nkonyeni is the epitome of arrogance, incompetence and malevolence. Every time she opens […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zimbabwe: Observers out! Bob’ll fix it…
As Zimbabwe fluctuates between glimmers of hope brought about by international and South African pressure on Robert Mugabe, and despair brought about by the SADC and certain other South Africans preaching quiet diplomacy, one man remains steadfast to his principles — Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This giant of the southern hemisphere has been unwavering in his […]