What I wouldn’t give for some of these to occur, though in all likelihood only the first and last are worth putting the kids trust fund on … 1. Robert Mugabe will stay in power. 2. The ANC will win a two-thirds majority. Again. This would, however, have more to do with Jesus not being […]
2009
Posted inNews/Politics
Whoring the Holocaust
The anti-war lobby’s use of Holocaust imagery to protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza is causing a commotion. At a protest I attended outside the Israeli Embassy in London on Sunday, activists waved placards demanding “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza”. One protester held up a home-made banner with a message scrawled in twirly black ink: […]
Posted inGeneral
Derby County: In the name of the father, the son and the holy Clough
Any Derby County fan older than five years of age will know the significance of the appointment of the boy Clough as the manager of the Rams — the messiah has come. (NB ANC members need not panic this is not a reference to the one referred to by ANC president Jacob Zuma when he […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time for South Africa to boycott apartheid Israel
President Kgalema Motlanthe, in his New Year’s message to the nation, joined the UN Secretary General in calling for the immediate stop to the Gaza attacks. He added, “The sheer savagery of the attacks launched by Israel against the residents of Gaza serves to conceal the fact that underlying this conflict is the reasonable demand […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Media, News/Politics
More than freedom of expression is under threat in South Africa
Thought Leader blogger Anja Merret recently mused about whether we were being brainwashed into panic. She asked, with considerable justification, whether our media and their international news networks were pumping so much doom and gloom into the already murky and polluted waters of South Africa’s national psyche that we were becoming the proudly SA Borg […]
Posted inGeneral
My very hazy crystal ball sees …
Right then — I’ve found and (somewhat) dusted off my crystal ball. Here goes nothing: 1. Despite playing the most beautiful brand of footie in the PSL, Orlando Pirates will not win anything during the regular season. 2. Frustrated at their continuing inability to beat The Mighty Buccaneers, Kaizer Chiefs will re-introduce the Sparletta Cup, […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
A refreshing take on business success
As an antidote to the pessimism infusing the business news as the global financial crisis plays itself out, I can recommend a gem of a book published last year by the former president of the Coca Cola Company, Donald Keough. The book is The Ten Commandments for Business Failure and two of those commandments are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Ah, a cause! Helen Suzman, “window dressing” and feminism
I avoided writing a piece about Helen Suzman as so many in Thought Leadership were already climbing on the bandwagon. I admired Ismail Lagardien’s piece on Thought Leadership. He put it very well — and timeously — that there are many unsung woman heroes in the apartheid struggle whose memory or lack of remembrance are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mugabe takes leave; he deserves arrest
Like me many of you must have been delighted to learn that Grace Mugabe has taken the family off to Malaysia for a month’s hard earned rest. After all the “first lady” must be exhausted from having had to spend the entire year in her mansion listening to stories about her countrymen and women dying […]
Posted inNews/Politics
State genocide in Gaza
Today, nine days into a campaign of extermination by Israel, the Gaza strip is the largest open-air prison camp the world has seen. Commentators the world over are outraged by the carnage of the 1.5-million Gazans and the complicity of bourgeois governments in the West. True to form, the US vetoed a UNSC resolution condemning […]
Posted inNews/Politics
ANC must clamp down hard on disruptions of Cope meetings
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Helen Suzman had it good; let’s remember others who did not have it as good
Very many people have expressed their admiration of Helen Suzman since her death — which is fair. I don’t expect people to reconsider their opinions of Ms Suzman. What I really want to do with this post is introduce another perspective on Ms Suzman – as a white person in South Africa, one who benefited […]