At the darkest hour for my family, I saw the Light and the blessings of the ancestors shine through the calm dignity of a domestic helper in Soweto. We had buried my mother, Nomali Memela, last Saturday. She died at home of natural causes. She was 83 years old. It being an ordinary Tuesday, this […]
2008
Posted inBusiness, Media
Weapon of mass collaboration (or how the market has just gotten smarter)
Rapid change is integral to how we operate these days. Although South African businesses have often been praised for the way in which they are able to harness rapid change for organisational results, the impact of this quicksilver modus operandi has not however been fully digested for our businesses practises in the long term. Ever-accelerating […]
Posted inBusiness
Mismanaged transformation is a bigot’s best friend
Submitted by Rob Rutherford As the thin blue line swept across the map and brought drizzle and ice to Gauteng recently, I imagined scenes across the country. Somewhere, a spinster found herself shivering over her knitting and resorted to hot marmalade toast. Incandescent bulbs zizzed in little houses under brooding afternoon cumulonimbi. Unsullied water gurgled […]
Posted inLifestyle
In the eye of the beheld
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, it used to be thus anyway, but now beauty has moved from the eye of the beholder and is now set firmly in the eye of the beheld. What kind of warped excuse for evolution of the human species is this?! In shrink mumbo-jumbo psycho-type talk, […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
The blogging Oscars
To be honest, when I first heard that the SA Blog Awards had a ceremony, I wanted to go mainly to see what bloggers look like. I blog, yes, but I don’t think I’m a Blogger (with a capital B). I don’t know about widgets and page views, and I don’t have ads and rankings. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Obama, Clinton or McCain face a great depression but who’s talking about poverty?
The Independent newspaper (UK) headlined on Tuesday with “The great depression” in reference to what it claims is 28-million Americans’ reliance on food stamps to survive. This, it goes on to say, arises from the era of the credit crunch, which it suggests is “a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis”. Ironically, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran’
Events recently have made John McCain’s boneheaded interpretation of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann seem far less inconsequential than he claimed it was, this time last year, while campaigning in South Carolina. His belligerence was, you may recall, prompted by a question from a war veteran on when he thought the US military might “send […]
Posted inGeneral
The minister and the plane queue
Submitted by Craig Irving Early one recent morning I was milling around the back of a plane queue in Cape Town — the queue stretched from the boarding steps and along the tarmac. The morning threw me some telling nuggets of social commentary. First I had been irritated by the arrival of a big, fat, […]
Posted inGeneral
The tricycle phenomenon
I have a friend who is a Catholic priest. He’s a sanctimonious, arrogant prick of colossal proportions, but there’s no need to worry about my soul: I’ll say ten Hail Mary’s and all will be sorted. About twelve years ago, while under the grip of my three-year long flirtation with atheism, I was locked in […]
Posted inLifestyle
In pursuit of happiness
Have you ever reached a crossroad in your life and wondered what would make you happy? All too often, what we thought would make us happy hasn’t, so we have found ourselves on a never-ending quest to grab that carrot that bobs along just beyond our reach. Do we really know? Does that promised happiness […]
Posted inLifestyle
Of fire-walking festivals
I went to the fire-walking festival at the Second River/Umbilo Temple in Cato Manor on Sunday. Wow. What an amazing ceremony. A large (very large, I’d say about 5m long) pit is filled with burning coals, with a basin of diluted milk at the end and a basin of turmeric liquid at the beginning. The […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma to table cryonics proposal to get tougher on crime
In line with his repeated calls for South Africa to get tougher on crime, African National Congress president Jacob Zuma has confirmed that he will be putting forward proposals for the introduction of cryonics at the next party conference. Msholozi believes that this will achieve a balance between those seeking the death penalty and the […]