It comes as no surprise to me that JZ is charming the pants off the media down in Davos — he is, after all, the most charismatic leader this country has ever produced (and that includes Madiba): http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id =6&art_id=vn20080125025211403C858475 http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/ BusinessTimes/Article.aspx?id=692199 At Polokwane, we watched him strutting his stuff and it really was exciting fare […]
2008
Posted inBusiness
Time to get your own back
While competition, we have been told ad nauseam, is good because it forces prices down and service up, I am not so sure any more. If we take an example at one extreme, the ANC government — which has no competition, is free to do pretty much as it wants and does just that and […]
Posted inGeneral
University audits: A panoptical theatre of the absurd?
With virtually all my colleagues shaking in their boots, so to speak, in the face of an impending double audit at our university this year — one internal, in preparation for the other, external one, later in the year — and my own instinctive as well as not-so-instinctive (philosophically informed) response being one of immediate […]
Posted inSport
From Angola to Tunisia
Bafana Bafana take on Tunisia on Sunday with some confidence after their 1-1 draw with Angola in the opening game of their Group D contest against Angola. While the team will be glad to get away from Southern African opposition and even if it is to take on one of the giants of North African […]
Posted inGeneral
Why I hate Kaizer Chiefs and Manchester United
There is nothing wishy-washy about my support for anything sporting. When I follow rugby, cricket or soccer I watch it on my own — I can’t stand the thought of having some doos, who thinks he’s a maven on sport, sprouting crap at me while I’m trying to concentrate. The fact that I swear like […]
Posted inBusiness
Shut down the aluminium smelters
Friday’s news that South Africa’s gold and platinum mines had been forced to suspend operations because Eskom could no longer guarantee the power supply has emphasised just how bad our electricity crisis has become. We can switch off lights, swimming pool pumps and geysers to our heart’s content but the reality is that we need […]
Posted inGeneral
Memories of a moving church
As the son of an Anglican preacher man in the Northern Cape (when it was still only a part of the Cape province — not that that makes any difference), I used to travel vast empty dusty grinding distances with my dad from one remote congregation to another. In some places church was somebody’s house. […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Eskom — it’s the information, stupid!
I am quite unable to see why some of Eskom’s computer geeks have not been able to solve at least one part of the energy crisis. Everyone keeps complaining that they don’t know when the power is going to go down, and that Eskom’s website is very unclear. Why not simply put a map of […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Sweetch orf de geezas!
Can you believe the asinine, parochial, juvenile response of the government to one of the worst crises this country has ever faced? Sweetch orf yo lights en de geezas. That’s the official spokestwit’s response on Talk Radio 702! Mines are stopping operations — stopping, not reducing, not downscaling, but stopping — just as the prices […]
Posted inLifestyle
Feel-good songs for Friday
These are a few of my favourite, can’t-resist-dancing songs. (It’s Friday! Lighten up!) I Feel it All by Leslie Feist. A new acquisition (just got it this week), but totally irresistible. Great beat, fantastic lyrics, and it’ll get stuck in your head and never, ever, ever leave. Best line? “I know more than I’m known […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Evil Kerviel: Société Générale’s rogue trader
Jackie Mason (who links his blog to ours through yours truly) once asked: What is the difference between a Jewish stuntman and an ordinary one? A normal stuntman, like Evel Knievel, is the guy who jumps his motorcycle over 20 buses while a Jewish stuntman is the guy who takes in $20-million and shows a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘We never thought it could happen here’
“We never thought it could happen here” is the most common phrase you hear in Kenya today. In three decades of covering conflict in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Korea, Chile, Argentina, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique, the two weeks I have just spent in Kenya saw the worst violence I’ve ever experienced among many of the nicest […]