Things change, sometimes very quickly and not always out in the open. So it is with hosted or cloud PBX solutions. Since BMI-TechKnowledge published the latest South African PBX market report (April 2011), there has been a marked growth of cloud solution models and vendors in this space, pointing to an increasing need to accommodate […]
2011
Posted inNews/Politics
Linden execution: High horses and hometown tangos
This week a 35-year-old South African drug trafficker, Janice Linden, was executed in China by lethal injection. That China should dare apply its own laws on its own territory has unleashed in South Africa a whirlwind of misplaced outrage and platitudinous sanctimony. The Inkatha Freedom Party termed the execution ‘unfortunate’ — which it undoubtedly was […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Thank God for Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens, author, journalist, master debater and razor-sharp intellectual has died. His passing was accompanied by an almost audible sigh of collective relief from the many hapless individuals that encountered him in debate while he lived. You could search long and hard for a sharper tongue driven by a more insightful, enormous brain for all […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
How to occupy the world
The leading tagline of the Occupy Wall Street movement reads: “Protest for world revolution.” This is an ambitious claim. In most respects it seems to ring quite true: the movement has successfully taken root not only in cities and towns throughout the United States but also in major urban centres around the world. On October […]
Posted inGeneral
‘Racism without races’
In the late eighties French thinker Etienne Balibar wrote an essay in which he considered the question of “neo-racism”, that is, a form of racism that is distinct from earlier models. Balibar’s point of departure is a description of racism as inscribing itself in “practices (forms of violence, contempt, intolerance, humiliation and exploitation), in discourses […]
Posted inLifestyle
What does security mean to you?
By Everjoice Win That was the question surrounding this year’s 16 Days of Activism. Militarism, conflict, state-sponsored violence, political violence, were some of the sub-themes we campaigned on. We talked about the big stuff, the big news tickets of the moment. The news coming out of Syria continues to be unbearable. Libya is still on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mangaung and the man from Nkandla
If the gaffes coming from the highest office in the land are anything to go by, there are forces right in the Union Buildings, Luthuli House and even in Cabinet working against and embarrassing the man from Nkandla. It seems the “Alliance of the Walking Wounded”, which rallied around President Jacob Zuma in the run-up […]
Posted inGeneral
Zambia, it’s time for change
By Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa As a child growing up, I recall the fervour and momentum around Zambia’s first democratic multiparty election which took place in 1991. I remember running in the streets chanting “the time is now … it’s time for change” and other chants focused on the people’s hope for a better future. Little […]
Posted inGeneral
The Mi-Fone A300 (and what it means for Africa)
The greatest trick Steve Jobs ever pulled was getting us to use his phone as the benchmark for all phones. They make a good benchmark of course: best experience, best industrial design and best ecosystem. Best for developed nations (and the developed nation pockets that exist in the developing world) perhaps? But best for Africa? […]
Posted inNews/Politics
COP17: Nothing to celebrate
By Alex Lenferna As COP17 finished on Sunday morning 5am, 36 hours into overtime, many celebrated the development of what is being referred to as the Durban Package. The South African lead negotiator, Alf Wills, among others, sees the Durban Package as a comprehensive deal that has taken into account the necessary compromise and has […]
Posted inNews/Politics
But gay is a Western invention
By Matthew Beetar Wow, go Hillary Clinton! As a friend on Facebook said, “It’s about time that the world’s most powerful leaders started acting like leaders”. In her recent speech made before the UN, the US Secretary of State argues, in short, that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) rights are human rights, concluding that […]
Posted inNews/Politics
President Zuma’s report card
It seems as if the Democratic Alliance was a little bit hasty in grading President Jacob Zuma and the Cabinet with the former being given an “F” for failure while the latter, with a few notable exceptions, not doing much better. Of course simply furnishing us with an overall symbol without going into any detail […]