One wonders when we as a country will actually have a honest and candid conversation with ourselves about the things we do and say. Indeed one only needs to look at the apologists and the denialists who hold public office to see that some of our countrymen believe that the people want their leaders to […]
2009
Posted inMedia
How do you come up with good ideas?
I’ve never had a good idea sitting at a desk. Ever. All of my ideas have arrived apparently unbidden, usually while I’m doing something totally unrelated, like standing in the shower, drifting off to sleep, or strolling aimlessly around Sandton City. Driving is especially productive, I’ve found. For some reason, perhaps because my mind is […]
Posted inGender violence
The odds are stacked against men
The odds are stacked against men. There are about 750 million sperm per ejaculate, yet only one sperm can fertilise the single egg a woman produces once a month. A male foetus is less likely to survive full-term pregnancy than a female, and boys are more likely to die in infancy. Boys are more likely to […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Obama between Iraq and a hard place
Who’d be president? I can imagine the temptation to just push that fabled red button must get really strong for Obama at times. When he took over the Oval Office from gung-ho Dubya, the exit plan for the “War on Terror” seemed very simple. Shore up the existing Iraqi and Afghan governments, hand over more […]
Posted inGeneral
2009’s hits and misses
Team of the Year — Close one between the *choke*Bulls*choke* and the Bokke here. I’ll go for the Bokke purely on the fact that a Lions Series is a real era-defining win. Player of the Year — He calls the shots like no other and leaves an imprint on every major victory — Fourie du […]
Posted inLifestyle
Sometimes culture is a load of bull
There are two main points that really get my goat about the current Ukweshwama debacle (Ukweshwama, for those who don’t know, is a traditional Zulu ceremony involving the ritualistic slaying of a bull). The first is the unbridled cruelty to the animal involved, and the second is the most widely used justification for the ritual’s […]
Posted inGeneral
How do you extract a birth certificate from an extinct country (Zim)?
Before getting into this blog, it would be appreciated if any reader can give me a practical answer or solution to the question posed in my blog title above and a quick solution (less than six months processing) for the unabridged South African birth certificate. Seriously. Including a Zimbabwean unabridged birth certificate. Dictionaries define “country” […]
Posted inGeneral
Extra, extra! Screwing Indians wholesale
I have had it with Indian businesses. Sure, half of them are my cousins and all that, but even shared bloodlines and Sunday Akhni doesn’t make shitty service and bigoted operations okay. We all talk about how big ol’ Telkom, SABC, Eskom and SAA rip us off, but no one writes about “the Indian business” […]
Posted inLifestyle
My current predicament is Denny Crane’s fault
It’s December again (“hello, hello Dezember” to my Joburg folk), and your thoughts right now are probably filled with the incredibly arduous job of buying Christmas gifts, fattening the Christmas turkey and stocking the Christmas-hosting house with the appropriate foods and liquids. Good on you. Oh, by the way. If anyone has a direct number […]
Posted inBusiness
Does Africa always need to go high-tech?
Do we sometimes overrate new technology at the expense of the old? Is there a possibility that we idealise the impact of the new to a degree that we completely overlook things that still work perfectly well? Does Africa always need to go high-tech? This is the continent that has in some ways led the […]
Posted inGeneral
Culture schmulture — some things are just wrong
The Zulu practice of Ukweshwama is violent and inhumane. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the comments around this practice this is what happens: Witnesses to the ritual describe the scene where a bull is released into a group of men, whose duty it then is to slay the animal. However, this is […]
Posted inGeneral
ANC-Cosatu rift widens
Just when South Africans thought that rifts within the alliance were a thing of the past post-Zuma versus Mbeki, along comes the next big one. This time it is Cosatu taking on what it considers to be the anti-left elements within the ANC. If regard is had to the Reuters article (click on link) then […]