It’s great to see an innovative approach to HIV education: Metropolitan and CellBook have created an information booklet — called B the Future — on HIV and Aids that can be downloaded onto your cellphone. An iAfrica.com article explains the concept nicely. To try it for yourself, SMS the word HIV to 32907. My thoughts […]
2009
Posted inNews/Politics
Has Biko’s party lost its Black Power?
We have seen the evidence: it seems voters are not impressed by Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness or Robert Sobukwe’s Pan-Africanism. There is now sufficient evidence for people to form their own judgement as to whether Azapo and the PAC have the potential to become a formidable opposition to the ANC. It has already been suggested […]
Posted inGeneral
Election day in Zululand: Some musings on ethnicity, tribalism
I spent election day driving around KwaZulu-Natal visiting polling stations both in Durban and Zululand. I started early and headed north to Ulundi and then onwards to Nongoma before making my way back to Durban stopping at various polling stations along the way. Election day was rather slow and sleepy despite the media hype about […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Do we need the biggest Cabinet in the world?
Can someone explain to me why South Africa needs 31 Cabinet ministers? According to The Times, Jacob Zuma is planning to enlarge the Cabinet from 28 to 31, plus 19 deputy ministers. That would make South Africa’s Cabinet, as far as I could ascertain, the largest in the world. The UK has 22 cabinet ministers; […]
Posted inGeneral
My traumatic voting experience
I walk into the voting station and a surge of emotion overcomes me, maybe it’s adrenaline or my mind is beginning to realise what I’m about to do, I don’t know, I’m not a shrink. I first tell the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) official who had my identity document (ID) to handle it with care […]
Posted inGeneral
Sanctimonious bigot gets my blood pressure up
(This piece first appeared on tonylankester.com) I’m usually pretty open-minded when it comes to reading or hearing the views of foreign journalists about South Africa. I enjoy hearing their perspectives, even if they are sometimes a bit naive and dewy-eyed. Occasionally I will get frustrated that they fail to see a broader picture or take […]
Posted inGeneral
South Africans: Pledging a new social contract
Martin Luther King Junior, in one of his most powerful sermons ever — the one delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Christmas Eve of 1967 — stated the obvious but critical that “we must either learn to live together as brothers, or we are all going to perish together as fools”. The […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
‘Don’t call me a kaffir’
Recently, about five-thirty in the afternoon when everybody was stuck in traffic, 5FM exposed its listeners to the following lyrics: Kom hier, kaffir, kom hier! Hoekom het jy nie my kar skoongemaak nie…Bliksem! (white male). Baas, don’t call me a kaffir (black male). Don’t call me a kaffir (choir). Thereafter the word “kaffir” is repeated […]
Posted inMedia
ANC Youth League declares war on cocks
(This post first appeared on tonylankester.com) Sometimes writing a blog entry is hard work. Occasionally, though, someone gives you material — an idea, a reference or image to work from — that is so rich, so ripe with possibility it makes you want to hurl yourself at the feet of the giver, weeping with gratitude. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
One day, under President Malema, will we fondly remember the good old Zuma days?
Anyone who is a politician in South Africa; everyone who wants our vote today: you’re a desperately sorry bunch, every one of you. You are, to a man and woman, failing us, the voters of South Africa. From the ANC and Cope to the DA, the ID, the little lads in ANCYL and pretty much […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Voting for accountability
The memory of a politician is often as short as their election promises are long. An example is the speed with which the elected — and electorate — forgot an election undertaking by the ruling party in 2004 promising to strengthen the Scorpions as part of its proposed anti-corruption drive. Fast forward five years and […]
Posted inGeneral
This Wembley balls-up is just not on
Forgive me for being an apparent party pooper, but have Everton already won the FA Cup? I could swear that was only the semifinal that they won on Sunday night. I mean, it must be confusing having a match at headquarters — usually reserved for big occasions such as, well, finals — but surely the […]