Muzzling the Nando’s chicken would be funny if it weren’t so serious: the ANC Youth League’s threat to mobilise — get that? — mobilise the people of South Africa to rise up against a manufacturer of spicy chicken takeaways is another worrying pointer to a near future that every true democrat must dread. Oh come […]
2009
Posted inGeneral
So what are YOUR narrow interests in these elections?
My wife and I were driving in Garsfontein in the general Tshwane area this past weekend when we spotted a guy in a blue Audi S3 Sport with Jacob Zuma’s grinning mugshot and the words, “Vote ANC” emblazoned on the driver’s side door panel. The first thing that struck me about this is that it […]
Posted inMedia
Mrs Balls-up
“Admiring advertising for its creativity is a bit like admiring Nazism for its cool uniforms,” Chris McEvoy wrote recently, and even though I’ve worked in the ad industry for virtually my entire salaried career*, it’s awfully tempting to agree with him. “The advertising industry is a soulless vortex that sucks up all the creativity it […]
Posted inGeneral
Zuma, Mpshe not off the hook yet
The decision by the acting National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), Mokotedi Mpshe, to drop criminal charges against Jacob Zuma, as many commentators and legal experts have said, has no legal basis whatsoever. It is a decision motivated by political considerations and appears induced under duress or undue pressure. Mpshe failed to convince the nation […]
Posted inGeneral
IPL Twenty20 shows South Africans what the world thinks of us
I’m sure that by the time you read this I will be either undergoing my operation or sleeping off the anaesthetic — possibly on the morphine drip (YES!! — top stuff). Notwithstanding I would like to once again thank you all very much for your kind words at this time. In respect of emails my […]
Posted inLifestyle
Next time you’re in Cape Town …
… Check out a great new restaurant — Sibanye Restaurant in Imizamo Yethu, the township just outside Hout Bay. I went yesterday and I was a little reluctant, not to go for lunch in the township, but because I thought it would be very touristy — Sibanye is specifically aimed at tourists. I was (very) […]
Posted inNews/Politics
DA by-election victories interrogated
Submitted by Marius Redelinghuys Nobody can deny the DA’s landslide — overwhelming — by-election victories in Cape Town’s 2nd and 79th wards. The by-election results indicated a 96.34% showing of support for the DA in ward 2 and 79.38% in ward 79. Moreover, one cannot deny that these by-election victories are marked improvements on the […]
Posted inGeneral
Madiba’s grandchildren will determine the future of the ANC
The duty of the young is to improve upon the past, which is, largely, a world created or messed up by their parents. What we are witnessing now is that moment when the grandchildren of Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and others must make a choice in terms of the political future and leadership […]
Posted inGeneral
Dinner with Dandala
Last week Wednesday I had the happy accident of having dinner with the newly formed Congress of the (disgruntled, intellectual) People’s presidential candidate in a very nice restaurant called Ginger in the lobby of The Beach Hotel, Port Elizabeth. Having been in that sleepy hollow for two days already, I was hoping for a bit […]
Posted inGeneral
Will an inept SA Rugby result in catastrophe?
While many local rugby fans, players, supporters and administrators are preoccupied with the poor SA Super 14 form; are going through the motions of the Vodacom Cup; thinking about the British & Irish Lions tour starting the end of May and preparing a team for the Currie Cup in July, a more sinister and monumental […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Two-thirds gevaar’ reasoned, not racist
In a recent ANC Today post, President Kgalema Motlanthe rehashes an article he wrote in the run-up to the 1999 elections in which he criticised the then DP’s calls to prevent a two-thirds majority as “a fear of democracy”. In that decade-old piece he said: Lacking a coherent or realisable vision for a better South […]
Posted inGeneral
What to do with that damned race card now?
Ever since Madiba passed the reins of power to the ineffectual intellectual, the dominion of the African National Congress has been marked — and marred — by its incomprehensible fetish with the “race card”. This silliness was trotted out with monotonous tedium every time they were at a loss for a reasonable or logical response […]