When you pour a packet of South African-made sugar into your morning coffee, you can feel good about the fact that the workers who milled, refined, packed, and shipped it are paid relatively decent wages, enjoy basic benefits, and are protected against severe exploitation. In many respects, South African sugar is about as “ethical” as […]
2011
Posted inNews/Politics
Credibility an issue if Mahlangu, Jub Jub deviate from versions
The failure of courts to adopt the correct approach to assessing the accused’s version of events when coming to a decision in a trial occurs far too often and, due to lack of funds or ignorance of the law, in many instances the party who has been convicted fails to take the matter further. The […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
#occupysouthafrica – for who and by who?
Last night I attended a planning meeting for #occupysandton the Johannesburg branch of the occupy movement that is spreading around the world. It began on Wall Street with a focus on the greed that has begun to characterise the economic order, and the inequality between the 99% and the 1%. They call themselves “a horizontally […]
Posted inLifestyle
Has ‘friend’ become meaningless?
“Blah blah fishpaste,” a friend said to me the other day. It’s the sort of thing I write in this blog all the time, but it’s starting to worry me. Who gets to be a friend these days? Does saying that you are “friends” with somebody have any meaning now that you can have 5 000 […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Do you let your children talk to strangers online?
Sometime around the age of six (or even earlier, if there are older siblings involved) children stop nagging for Hot Wheels and Bratz Dolls and start nagging for a Club Penguin or Moshi Monsters account. The reasons they give for this are as follows: 1) EVERYONE else at school has a Moshi Monsters / Club […]
Posted inGeneral
SA soccer — from hero to zero
So we entered what we all thought would be a sustainable and successful era of growth for SA football. We hosted an amazing Fifa World Cup in 2010 under coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who was assisted by current head coach Pitso Mosimane. The next hurdle for SA soccer was and no seemingly remains the Africa […]
Posted inGeneral
The importance of teaching Foucault in a time of conformism
Every time I teach a course on that inimitable “archaeological” and simultaneously “genealogical” thinker Michel Foucault I realise how important it is for students to be exposed to, and engage with, his unique mode of transformative thinking and praxis, or perhaps, thinking AS praxis. For make no mistake, to discover Foucault as a philosopher is […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Nobel could not have come at a better time for Liberia
By Robtel Neajai Pailey Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and peace activist Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, became the second and third African women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 7. Gbowee and Johnson Sirleaf have forever transformed the image of Liberia, from a pariah nation of warlords and gun-slinging, drug-induced prepubescent […]
Posted inLifestyle
Biological clocks and shifting demographics
So here I am, tugging the price stickers off the baby clothes I’ve bought for my sister. She’s due to give birth to a little girl within the next month. The child will be the first grandchild for my parents, who’ve had to wait a long time for this. It’s lucky that my mother is […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Terre’Blanche murder accused’s affidavit vital
Judge John Horn, who was hearing the murder trial of accused Chris Mahlangu and a minor in the Ventersdorp High Court in North West on Monday, has been asked to rule on the admissibility of the accused’s bail application to form part of the evidence at trial. The pair is charged with inter alia the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Rich, white and crazy
The suburban landscape of Pretoria East is dotted with a spattering of rugged, rocky hills that overlook the city bowl, rising up from a plain crisscrossed with strip malls and chain franchises. During a recent trip to the area to visit some friends, I noticed that these little hills have become the sites of affluent […]
Posted inGeneral
Jake White: Qualified, but right for the job?
The news is in that Jake White, who recently signed a four-year contract with Super Rugby franchise ACT Brumbies, intends submitting his CV to the South African Rugby Union (Saru) for the position of Springbok Rugby head coach. His potential employers are the same ones that two days after the SA victory parade in 2007 […]