Pitso Mosimane is a man on a mission. His plan to improve Bafana Bafana’s prospects in international football is clear and straight to the point. Safa as always, has pledged its full support for its coach. Like many coaches before him who came full of ideas and plans for Bafana and the improvement of South […]
2010
Posted inGeneral
Gays, race and this institutional thing of marriage
Truth be told, I am not married and have never been married, now at the sweet, tender, gullible age of 47. That’s right, the Chook and I (the Chook being my missus Marion) have never stood under showers of confetti and their lovely, tasteful representation of great fertility: clouds of sperm pouring luxuriously through the […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Why this pale male is shutting up (for now anyway)
Six weeks ago I touched down in London: a born-and-bred Cape Town boy about to start a new job in another country. While the online smorgasbord of Politicsweb, the Mail & Guardian and Business Day still form a daily news staple, an inevitable sense of detachment from the roiling intrigue of South African politics has […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Desmond Tutu — archbishop sans frontieres
Two recent events have drawn my attention to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Did I say two? Maybe three. Or four. The first was his announcement that he would retire after his looming 79th birthday — on October 7. The second is linked with an excellent doctoral thesis — based on virtually everything ever published by […]
Posted inGeneral
Play ‘em in Perth
I took history as a subject at school. There were only eight of us in the class, the more pragmatic having opted for biology or geography. The teacher’s name was Van der Merwe and he tutored in a high-pitched squeaky voice. But I never regretted his teachings. He taught us that those who ignore history […]
Posted inGeneral
The World Cup paradigm shift
One of the many definitions of paradigm is that it is “a pattern or model, or an exemplar”. Another says that it is a “thought pattern” or a way of looking at or relating to things. With the World Cup having come and gone, this is a great opportunity to ride the positive wave of […]
Posted inGeneral
We need a nanny state
As Africa grapples with the strenuous task of finding lasting solutions to her problems under the mantra “African solutions to African problems”, we should perhaps retreat a little and adorn microscopic lenses to focus on particular problems, understand them and be able to suggest what could potentially set Africa on a successful trajectory towards development […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Do we really believe in diversity?
I’m not so sure we do. As South Africans we’re great at asserting our unity as “a people”, by quoting Tutu, Mandela and even Mbeki (though not Zuma — not yet, anyway) about rainbows or renaissances, and we’re especially good at performing our proudly South African brand of “unity through diversity” — just look at […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Towards a legacy befitting a post-world cup South Africa
One of my failings as an Optimist is that I have a disproportionate amount of faith in the goodness of people, particularly those who are entrusted to lead others. But having spent a little over three decades in this world, I realise that I am slowly losing my look-on-the-bright-side outlook as more and more I […]
Posted inLifestyle
The jasmine is late this year
The jasmine is late this year. It’s nearly August and the flowers are still little more than tiny carmine spears poking out of a tangle of leaves. I love jasmine: it’s the scent of spring, of new beginnings, of possibility and the inevitably of clocking over of another year for me come the last official […]
Posted inGeneral
Six babies die at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and no-one to blame. Was it an act of God?
Six babies died at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital in May. An investigation into the deaths found no-one liable despite the isolation of the norovirus which is known to be spread via contaminated hands. If there is no-one that can be blamed, are we then to believe that these deaths were an act of God? ↲ the […]
Posted inGeneral
Facebook as cyber-architecture
Architecture is usually understood as the science, or art, of designing buildings with a view to constructing them, but among its current definitions one also finds concepts such as “network architecture”, and the structural interaction, behaviour or design of a computer system or programme, down to the attributes of particular components of the system. Seen […]