Last night’s Drudge Report included a breaking newsflash that seems to indicate that Hillary Clinton, for so long the favourite to take the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, may well be on the verge of dropping out of the race for the White House. The general mood in the media seems to […]
2008
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Double-barrelled surnames — just blame them on Felicia
For a nation that has so vehemently cast off the shackles of colonialism, we South Africans have done a bloody good job of opting for that ridiculous British anachronism — the double-barrelled surname. It’s even stranger that this rather pompous trait seems to be confined almost exclusively to high-powered female members of the ruling party. […]
Posted inLifestyle
Stories from the city, stories from the sea
I know that the holiday season is never a good way to judge a city. If I was to look around Jo’burg for something to do over the festive season, I would probably come up with very little, as many music venues, galleries and theatres shut down. It’s understandable, given the mass exodus that takes […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A man of substance
If Barack Obama wins Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary — and after his decisive showing in the Iowa caucuses last week, his chances look very strong — it will be time to start thinking seriously about President Obama. The prospect appeals. Not to Bill Clinton, of course. He has been telling reporters Obama is unelectable and […]
Posted inGeneral
Much ado about … well, quite a lot actually
Spare a thought for the family of Andrew Olmsted. You may not know him, or even have heard of him, but you’re about to. This is what was posted on his blog site over the weekend: “This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Jacob Zuma: Four weddings and an indictment
While Kenyans were praying for peace yesterday, their leaders continued to squabble over the spoils of the elections. Probably just some form of “post”-destructuralism I must have missed. Mind you, if you think they’re slightly misguided, how about Bobby “Who’s Fuelling Whom” Mugabe who announced his brand-new elephant biltong over the weekend? Local conservationists are […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
‘The roots of fear’ and the leaftips of hope
Sharon Begley, an outstanding reporter/writer for Newsweek, wrote an exceptional piece on the roles and rules of fear and hope in American presidential politics (“The roots of fear”, December 24 2007). Against the backdrop of South Africa’s mostly superficial Bakelite* political analysis in which the same tawdry arguments about personalities and so-called “policy planning” (an […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Writers and the fallacy of fame
Margaret Atwood wrote: “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.” She continued by saying “that’s a light enough comment upon the disappointments of encountering the famous, or even the moderately well known — they are always shorter and older and more […]
Posted inLifestyle
About the (un)affordability of life
If interest-rate and price hikes continue as they have last year, life will look bleak for many South Africans in 2008. It’s the most basic things in life, the kind of costs that no one can really escape, that suddenly got increasingly expensive — in short: food, petrol and rent. Our quality of life is […]
Posted inGeneral
Escape from the Marquee
This letter, I’m afraid, is something of a kiss and tell, and I would imagine, for adults only. It’s about when my ex-girlfriend and I briefly infiltrated Jo’burg’s swinging community. “Swinging” is described as “lively, exciting, and fashionable” … and “sexually liberated” in my Compact Oxford English Dictionary, but what it really comes down to […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Jacob Zuma and the fair-trial conundrum
At about 4pm on May 8 2006, while Judge Willem van der Merwe was handing down a verdict of not guilty in the Jacob Zuma rape trial, I was waiting for a client outside the Carlton Centre in the Johannesburg city centre. The atmosphere in town was electric and even though I obviously knew who […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Don’t fire Pandor, fire some teachers
Although in general I love her blogs, firing Naledi Pandor, as Charlene Smith suggests, is really not going to help the desperate state of South African schools. Firing teachers, however, might. And there is precedent for it.