Before the main event, just a quick mention on last night’s epic struggle for the last golf Major of the year. Sergio Garcia, in Spain’s golden year of sport, looked set to claim his first big prize, but that nerveless Dubliner that is Padraig Harrington obviously didn’t read the script. Thrice, he drenched in long […]
2008
Posted inNews/Politics
Pimp my (police) ride!
An article on August 08 2008 in one of Mail & Guardian’s competitors’ car magazines open with the line “Porsches, Dodge Vipers, Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Corvettes, Lamborghinis”, which is what the Metro Police in Cape Town are asking for. According to the article, Heathcliff Thomas, the head of Cape Town’s traffic department, showed one photo […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Africa Addio: images of Africa are a contested terrain
Africa Addio was an Italian documentary shot in the 1960s that showed Africa as a land filled with savagery and ruination as colonial powers withdrew (by Jacopetti and Prosperi, 1966). The book that accompanied the film was somewhat sympathetic to the plight of Africans with an appraisal of the burdens and damage wrought by unchecked […]
Posted inGeneral
Leading thoughts needed on Aids
Submitted by Muhammad Chohon I signed 12 death certificates this week in one ward at a public hospital in Johannesburg. All 12 of these unfortunate souls died directly from Aids. On average, at my hospital, 200 to 300 patients die monthly from Aids. The average age of these people is 30. Sixty-five percent are women. […]
Posted inGeneral
South Africa: Immense and imminent possibilities
Clearly, the weakening value system — manifesting itself in many appalling ways and propelled by various intricate factors — in our society is straining our social fabric and could end up reversing gains made thus far. It is in times like these that some readily invoke WB Yeats’s most quoted line: “Things fall apart, the […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Would you miss TV?
This weekend, I moved from my zhoozh fully furnished apartment with jaw-droppingly amazing view of the Sydney harbour (to go with discounted R4 500 weekly rent) to a slightly less expensive, less zhoozh apartment with a slightly less spectacular view of Mosman Bay marina. It was a painful experience, largely because I moved my worldly goods […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Arms deal: Is there something more important than the truth?
The controversial arms deal has come back to life again over the past few weeks like those trick birthday candles your parents repeatedly used to humiliate you as a kid. Thanks to the latest Sunday Times exposé, and the refrain in this week’s M&G, it is again top-of-mind, crawling around the Talk Radio 702 phone-in […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Journalism’s end game
“South African’s should be worried. Without an aggressively free press your whole democratic system collapses. If you don’t have a democratic system informing society, people will elect leaders the enmities. Zimbabwe placed no limit on advertising, the only limit was on editorial comment. When you do that you land up with a completely stuffed up economy.” – Martin Weltz, Publisher, Noseweek.
Posted inNews/Politics
Don’t just bitch about the government; kick it out of office!
I want to pick up a factual thread set out in Michael Trapido’s reasoned post, “The Zuma conundrum“, and deal, as an aside, with some of the reactions to his post. For the record, I have never met Michael Trapido. I got to read some of his columns only after I first discovered Thought Leader […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
SA Olympic outfits panned by Ozzie fashion police!
South Africa failed at the first hurdle of the Olympics, if the assessment of two Australian fashionistas is anything to go by. They gave South Africa 2/10 and 6/10 for their uniforms at the opening ceremony in Beijing on Friday night. The first judge felt that the South Africans fell down because a) they looked […]
Posted inGeneral
The fast and the furious: Beijing slipstream
“I was doing well, till I felt Gay coming on my shoulder, and that’s when I panicked” — Asafa Powell. Truth be told, you cannot blame the lad. Wouldn’t you have reacted the same way? While his already established reputation for choking like a newbie at the docks guaranteed that the above statement was received […]
Posted inLifestyle
Curse of the alien roadhog
I have argued with myself over this one for years, but the mountain of evidence is now way too vast to warrant any other conclusion: BMW drivers are aliens who simply do not understand our earthly behaviour. I know, I know, it is madness to think in such terms. It is hideously unfair; surely there […]