By Lionel Faull September 6 was the day Grahamstown welcomed 40 young leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa and prominent members of the South African and Grahamstown civil society to engage one another for three days on the practice of ethical leadership — a gathering that could grow in time to become Africa’s premier conference of […]
2009
Posted inNews/Politics
Sour grapes: Would ALL the Brandon Huntleys stand up?
Virtually every person I know who has left South Africa has done so because they could not find work in SA due to BEE and AA and/or they had been traumatised by violence and were extremely uncertain about their and their loved ones’ future in South Africa. Except for those above the age 60, every […]
Posted inGeneral
Why OBE has not worked in South Africa
Outcomes-based education (OBE) has not worked in South Africa. For someone of the stature of Mamphela Ramphele to say this openly and courageously is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifling atmosphere of lip-service being paid to the ANC-government’s ill-starred, bureaucracy-blighted policy by many educators who admit privately that teachers are despondent and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why would the Canadians want Huntley?
Why didn’t former Capetonian Brandon Huntley get off his skinny backside and apply for permanent residence in Canada through the normal channels like everyone else? Oh, for sure, the emigration process involves spending a lot of money, filling in lots of forms, and spending a lot of time in queues at home affairs, which is […]
Posted inGeneral
Media panic worse than any pig flu
While any death should be seen as a tragedy I am finding the media panic surrounding the swine flu to be maddening. Right now the swine flu appears to have a kill rate that is less than the normal flu. The threat of it mutating into a mass-killing strain is the same threat of the […]
Posted inGeneral
The Huntley story and re-racialisation of SA
South Africa continues to be one of the most polarised nations on earth with race still being one of the most contentious issues. Brandon Huntley’s story merely points this out once again. The ruling party and indeed many people in the country still use apartheid-era categorisations. Instead of fighting for a non-racial South Africa far […]
Posted inGeneral
Is Judge Nkola Motata — convicted this week of drunken driving — fit to judge?
This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Is Judge Nkola Motata — convicted this week of drunken driving — fit to judge?
Posted inGeneral
A Test of Bok depth
Right, time to don the green-tinted “everything keeps going right” Bok shades again. The Tri-Nations title is all but in our grasp and having donnered all three shades of black, gold and red out of the toughest competition in the world, no-one can dispute our claim to be the world’s best team. But, and here’s […]
Posted inGeneral
Are Fifa and Uefa coming down hard on English clubs?
Is their success at luring talent and the financial success of the English Premier League turning English clubs into victims? Fifa recently gave Chelsea a 12-month ban on any transfer activity for “tapping” or inducing Gael Kakuta from French club Lens in 2007. The charge says Chelsea induced the youngster to break his contract with […]
Posted inMedia
The genius of Lee-Ann Liebenberg
If there is one thing I appreciate in marketing it’s Honesty. I can spot a sham at the subject line, the “I make art therefore buy this crap” stuff that’s force-fed onto us every day by C-listers the world over. So I find something refreshing in the honesty that Lee-Ann Liebenberg offers in her Twitter […]
Posted inGeneral
SA’s collective discrimination: Being ‘Western’ is being ‘white’
Nearly a quarter of a century ago I was at Rhodes University and included Afrikaans 1 among my subject choices. I will always remember the Afrikaans lecturers who insisted on referring to any Xhosa or Zulu-speaking female student as “that beautiful black woman with her impeccable Afrikaans” or that “wonderful black lady who got a […]
Posted inGeneral
Is SA ready to deal with a terror threat?
Most of us who still have command of our diminishing cognitive faculties will recall that fateful day in 1972 during the summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when armed thugs belonging to a Palestinian militant group, Black September, descended upon the Olympic village that housed the Israeli team and held them hostage. This band of […]