It depressed me a bit to write the title for this column, playing on one of the late Hitchen’s book titles, God is not Great. I think nothing can ever be achieved by slamming other people’s religious beliefs. Those people are going to continue holding on to their beliefs. Perhaps even more dearly. The attack […]
2011
Posted inGeneral
Despite Nobel prizes, the time has yet to come for Liberia’s women
Obaa oh… this is our time. Obaa oh… this is our time. Oh, woman oh… this is our time! Oh, woman oh… this is our time! As I sat in the Spektrum Theater at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in downtown Oslo watching the glistening red, yellow, blue and green lights on the stage and […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Race: Some thoughts about a discussion not had…
What’s in a word? Quite a lot, sometimes, and not a helluva lot other times. But who’s to say? Several years ago, one of my dearest of friends, AGRB, was accused of being a spy for the apartheid state. I knew that the accusation was baseless, so did most of our colleagues in the media. […]
Posted inGeneral
Alain Badiou, the “event”, and political subjectivity
Alain Badiou, whose work is, as far as I can tell, not widely known in the English-speaking world – where Peter Hallward has done a lot to compensate for this lack – is a contemporary thinker who has done much to refine the philosophical understanding of the human subject. As Hallward observes (in the Translator’s […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mangaung: Zuma 1 – Malema 1
The road to Mangaung is getting increasingly interesting and nastier. The media is also playing its role in askew and misleading reporting on the recent Limpopo ANC provincial conference and party elections to make it even nastier. I was totally confused to see various news outlets reporting that Malema has been thrown a lifeline by […]
Posted inGeneral
The Alternative 2011 Awards
With 2011 done and dusted, it’s time for some cheer to be spread among those sportsman and suits who, in a nutshell, didn’t say “The boys are disappointed” when asked how they felt about losing: We will miss you award (if he is not reappointed) Peter de Villiers – While not everyone’s cup of tea, […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Christmas spending: where’s the money coming from?
Sandton City is a madhouse. The reports are disturbing: gaggling crowds of teens everywhere, shops heaving with bodies, zombies wandering from store to store, gift lists clutched in clammy hands. Some of my hollow-eyed acquaintances report that they didn’t even make it beyond the parking lot. Christmas is coming, and apparently South Africans are shopping […]
Posted inGeneral
Christmas? They’re trying to kill off Jeremy Clarkson
Mrs Traps is outraged at the fact that this Christmas, her favourite time of year, she has seen very few television programmes celebrating the holiday. Despite being Jewish she loves the carols and all the other festivities that Christians traditionally employ to remember their saviour. On Christmas Day she normally serves up her famous ‘Turkey […]
Posted inGeneral
The making of Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Laureate
by Robtel Neajai Pailey In 2009 I screened the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell in Monrovia, Liberia, with a group of Liberian women — young and old — and found myself buoyed by an unconventional story portraying unconventional women in very unconventional circumstances. Two years I am now revisiting the film after it […]
Posted inGeneral
Proteas undergoing epoch change
It has been 20 years since South Africa re-entered international cricket when they played India in Calcutta on November 10 1991, in what was the country’s first ODI. Two of the men who played in that match, Andrew Hudson and Allan Donald, are now intimately involved with the current Proteas set-up. Hudson heads up the selection […]
Posted inGeneral
Executions and fear in China
Daily I take a 45-minute bus trip to the school I teach at in Che Feng (pronounced something like chaw fa-ang). The place is an eye-opener in terms of poverty and beauty. Where I get on is a relatively “posh” area by Chinese standards. Though there is still a lot of poverty there are plenty […]
Posted inGeneral
11 things I am grateful for
It was, quite simply, unthinkable. Not even the most paranoid would lie awake at night worrying about it, and yet it happened. A woman stepped into a lift in New York City, as millions of people do every day. Only this time, she got her foot caught in the gap between the lift car and […]