By Edith Jibunoh I woke up to horrible news this morning and I’m angry. John has worked for my family for years. I’ve known him since I was a little girl when he used to take me to school every morning. This is an African story. The one big happy extended family that blends employees […]
2011
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
I’m tired of watching the royal family
While South Africans tallied votes from local government elections last week, the Queen of England visited Ireland. Just one of these events made most international headlines. For some reason we are expected to care what this woman does. Almost 60 years on a throne she can claim as her own simply because she had the […]
Posted inGeneral
Exiling the poets
Many of us were shocked on Sunday last when we turned the front page of the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport, to see the horrific image on page two of the Yemeni poet, Walid Mohamed Ahmed al-Ramisi, who had his tongue cut off as a result of his criticisms of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) — the opposition coalition in […]
Posted inNews/Politics
DA puts a shot across the ANC’s bows
This was the first post-democracy election in which there has been a real contestation for power.
Posted inNews/Politics
What you should know about those who hate the ANC and vote DA
1. They are IGNORANT of history. They don’t know or accept that the ANC is the oldest liberation movement in the world. 2. They don’t know who they are. They are unable to define their true identity. 3. They believe colonialism, apartheid and racism are dead, or never mattered. 4. They espouse colour-blindness to pretend […]
Posted inGeneral
Choosing the right advertising partners in a changing digital market
As the print publishing industry fades and digital platforms flourish, market consolidation is the order of the day, with creative agencies scrambling to acquire digital skills. But it is a slippery acquisition target — the software development fraternity is itself growing and mutating, with complex and differentiated skill sets evolving around social, mobile and online […]
Posted inGeneral
Online retail taking off
Last week World Wide Worx released its online retail report which showed that online retail is growing by about 30% every year and will grow by about 40% in 2011 according to industry expectations. I’ve had a chance to see the full report as I am doing some work for a client in the industry […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Black to the future v back to the future
Never in the 17 years of democracy has the DA been driven to appeal so passionately, so desperately and in some ways so comically to the black voter. Launching its manifesto outside Pretoria, in Mamelodi, the DA (leader) has been doing a lot of “black things” lately. Helen Zille has not missed an opportunity to […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Girls, boys lead different lives because of govt services
If the leading cause of death for girls under eleven is HIV and the leading cause of death for boys of the same age is road traffic accidents, what does this tell us about the way our lives are gendered?
Posted inNews/Politics
Ballots, not bullets
It wasn’t guns and bullets that woke me from my writing slumber, it was the ballots cast peacefully across SA today, May 18, which made me jolt from my seat and announce myself once again on these pages. Dear reader, nothing makes me happier than a peaceful, free and fair election in Africa. This because […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why don’t councillors tweet?
So there I was in the voting booth this morning, pen in hand, examining the list of candidates in my ward. I live in the suburbs, so the queue was a classically maid-and-madam scenario. Earlier, a middle-aged man standing in front of me had phoned to postpone his flight plan: this is the sort of […]
Posted inGeneral
Notes on a genocidal scandal
The memories of the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina in the mid-nineties must never be extinguished from our hearts. The reason why the ending of one was successful, and the failure to end the other is the darkest page in post-war US foreign policy, is banally simple. Bosnia stirred the conscience of the West, […]