The Bulls: Take probably the best provincial/regional team ever assembled, lose probably the best winger of the last five years, add two returning heroes, plus Heyneke Meyer back pulling the backroom strings and what do you get? A very likely repeat. Fatigue is the only realistic barrier to yet another year of Blue domination. Well […]
2010
Posted inGender violence
Why women say no to sex
I had a horrible flashback yesterday of this terrible sociology course that I took while at university. The course material and lecturer were stimulating enough, and the course was focused on gender, so it was really right up my alley. However, each session my temperature and the acerbity of my tone would slowly rise as […]
Posted inGeneral
Sometimes a Bond girl is all you need
I meet Huwaida Arraf at the Palestinian Struggle and Human Spirit Film Festival held in the working class district of Athlone in Cape Town. It’s a chilly evening but I request we move our conversation outside. The fake Israeli soldiers harassing patrons at a replica check-point inside the foyer of the Joseph Stone Auditorium are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Issues that arouse’
“The issues that arouse at the Special Conference of the South African Communist Party last year, in relation to the ANC delegation to the conference, will be finalised at a bilateral … ” So reads the last paragraph of the section dealing with the alliance in the ANC’s post-Lekgotla statement released today. Clearly this is […]
Posted inGeneral
Is murder sometimes ok?
Imagine a scenario where you have murdered someone without ever believing you could, or without ever wanting to. Nevertheless, you have done it. You have done it and by some lucky chance, nobody knows. Or at least, those who do are too chicken to say so. What do you do? Who are you? South Africa, […]
Posted inGeneral
Google vs China
By Richard Catto This month Google announced via its official blog that it would no longer be co-operating with China over the issue of filtering search engine results on Google.cn (which is the localised Chinese version of Google’s search engine). If this was not acceptable to the Chinese government, Google would close its Chinese offices […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Beware the gay-bashing evangelicals
By Richard Kaplan There comes a moment in every young gay man’s life when he has the awful realisation that no matter how hard he tries, he will not become the president, the pope or the chief rabbi. This is followed by the second great realisation that at some stage he will have to tell […]
Posted inGeneral
White matrics are our black future
Now that we know that 230 000 African matric students failed last year, we can sit down to have a decent conversation about what is wrong with them. The fact that it is white and so-called Indian students who achieved straight As has serious implications for the leadership of this country in the next 10 years […]
Posted inGeneral
A multifaceted mirror for individuals (3)
In my previous post I said that one has to go further (as Kierkegaard himself went further) than the two Kierkegaardian models discussed earlier. More specifically, in the last section of Either/or, II — entitled “Ultimatum”, which consists largely of a “sermon” (supposedly by a pastor-friend of Judge William) with the heading, “The edification implied […]
Posted inGeneral
Zapiro cartoon on justice system is justified
The outrage expressed by Numsa at the latest Zapiro cartoon in the Mail & Guardian fails to take into account the extreme nature of the circumstances giving rise to its conception. If it had done so it should have been hard-pressed to condemn it as “distasteful” and “deplorable”. As things stand, we are witnessing an […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The ominous ambitions of SA’s war veterans
Zuma now has two self-appointed battalions of protectors flanking him, the ANCYL and MKVA. Both readily express a desire for the obliteration of their opponents.
Posted inLifestyle
How to stop litterbugs
Baby cats are cute little things called litter. That’s not the litter I’m talking about here. This is about human litter. Not the daily verbal type either, the physical mess we scatter around freely. It’s the product of a nasty, filthy habit of those with no regard for the environment or what happens to the […]