“Sue, may I slide my fingers over your crotch? May I squeeze your bum? Rip off your panties?” These are questions men do not ask, and should not ask, as women prefer the alpha male who displays confidence, authority, boldness to go where no one has gone before without asking direct permission … or rather […]
2011
Posted inLifestyle
The weight of fatherhood
No, this won’t be some swollen tome on the gravity of parenthood. It won’t be some heavy words, wrung from worried hands, on the seriousness of fatherly duty. That stuff is all fine, a walk in the park, the kids are gonna be fine. The weight I want to speak of is the ounces and […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Nonhle and the Saab
So Nonhle Thema drives a Saab. We know this because she tweeted about it today, twice. To whit: “My SAAB was custom made for me.No one else has it General Motors did this for me a gift ” and “And my car was half a mill…thank u General Motors”. 75 627 people follow Nonhle, ready to […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Top secret: Arms deals to Tampax boxes
Cecil Burgess, chairperson of the parliamentary ad hoc committee on the Protection of Information Bill, was quoted in Business Day as saying that the committee had proceeded cautiously and carefully and obtained legal advice at every step of the way and amendments made where necessary. ANC MP Luwellyn Landers supported Mr Burgess, who said that […]
Posted inNews/Politics
SA, I hate to break it to you, you’re not so special
By Vadim Nikitin Dear South Africa, When I first arrived here, amid your familiar gaggle of beggars and black BMWs, I thought: “Have I landed in Moscow by mistake?” After several years of living away from Mother Russia, it felt like a homecoming. You and my country are like twins separated at birth, with one […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A reality check on Somalia
By Dr Unni Karunakara The current emergency unfolding in and around Somalia is being portrayed by many aid organisations and the media in one-dimensional terms, such as “famine in the Horn of Africa” or “worst drought in 60 years”. But only blaming natural causes ignores the complex geopolitical realities exacerbating the situation and suggests that […]
Posted inGeneral
The hysterical rape debate
By Justin Mackie In May this year Kenneth Clark, the UK justice secretary, while defending a government proposal to half the sentences of offenders who plead guilty from the outset, was drawn unwittingly into the rape debate. The proposal he was defending did not specifically relate to sexual offences but the emotive allure of linking […]
Posted inGeneral
Is capitalism destroying our planet? (2)
Throughout this paper* I have used the term “capital” broadly in accordance with Marxist usage to denote the process by which money (as signifier of capital) endlessly reproduces itself, that is, the dynamism at the heart of this process. “Capitalism”, on the other hand, is the mode of social being, or kind of society which […]
Posted inNews/Politics
City Press, really?
By Ayanda Sitole City Press’s attempt to appease the public by reporting that the incident in which self-titled Facebooker “Eugene Terrorblanche” posed over a black child in a hunting pose, was a family “joke”, is seriously disturbing. The provocative image, published on the front page of last week’s Sunday Times, showed an unnamed white male […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The world needs a better moral compass
At the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony of 1960 at Oslo University in Norway, in his acceptance speech, Chief Albert Luthuli highlighted a fundamental challenge that still confronts Africa that “our continent has been carved up by the great powers. Alien governments have been forced upon the African people by military conquest […]
Posted inGeneral
Springboks ride the wave of underestimation
In the fourth season of the American political drama The West Wing, Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet is preparing for the presidential debate against James Brolin’s Governor Ritchie. Apart from Brolin’s southern accent and immaculate white hair, an aspect of the governor’s strategy that Bartlet’s staff is concerned about is that of lowering expectations. The governor […]
Posted inGeneral
Is capitalism destroying our planet?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to give some attention to the widely agreed upon evidence that it has been happening for some time, and, moreover, has accelerated. It is hard to know where to start and where to end when it comes to listing relevant “evidence” in this regard, even if there is […]