I have had it with Indian businesses. Sure, half of them are my cousins and all that, but even shared bloodlines and Sunday Akhni doesn’t make shitty service and bigoted operations okay. We all talk about how big ol’ Telkom, SABC, Eskom and SAA rip us off, but no one writes about “the Indian business” […]
Azad Essa
Azad Essa is a journalist at Al Jazeera.
He is also the author of a book called "Zuma's Bastard" (Two Dogs Books, October 2010)
Yes, it is the name of a book. A real book. With a kickass cover.
Click on the cover to find out more.
You know you want to.
or join the revolution:
www.facebook.com/zumasbastard
http://www.azadessa.com/about
Accidental Academic won best political blog at the South African Blog awards 2009 and is a finalist for 2010.
Posted inLifestyle
Even the Taliban would’ve found it funny
After telling me where he was from, he grunts and looks the other way, nostrils flared as he pretends to admire the scenery. Of course, through the crowded wig-wagging of bodies, there was nothing to see. I peer at him and he reminds me of something I had seen on National Geographic. That thing about […]
Posted inGeneral
‘The blacks have f***** it up haven’t they?’
It is a glorious summer morning in Istanbul; colours of the sky resemble a messy oil painting; both resplendent and melancholic in one go. After roaming around the ancient Roman road in Sultanahmet, Divanyalo Caddessi, searching for a cheap but tasty joint to have breakfast, I find myself standing outside a quaint pastry and fresh […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Let’s jerk off to climate change
If you haven’t blogged, made a poster, built a sand castle or ran naked through the streets screaming “the climate changers are coming”, then you’re quite a tough cookie aren’t you? If you haven’t switched off the lights and sat in the dark or considered organic eggs or experimented with recycled bath water in your […]
Posted inGeneral
Meet the Jew Zionists love to hate
I am not a fan of famous professors. They are normally so caught up in their research that they’re often socially starved animals; aloof and arrogant in their approach. I’d rather read their work than meet them. Some have been in the library so long they’re unaware of the hairs growing on their nose. When […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Daily Planet: Obama beats Superman
The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo is a sort of religious site. Sitting adjacent to the harbour in central Oslo, a spot that could easily pass for Cape Town’s waterfront, the Peace Centre is a temple for serious diplomats, earnest hippies and wide-eyed, encyclopaedia-stuffed kids. I suppose the plush building is to idealistic peace-mongers what […]
Posted inGeneral
Maybe the Holocaust was not enough
I I jump off a packed train in Munich and walk from the platform towards the station when a plain clothes policeman stops me. He flashes his badge at me. He is not an immigration officer. He is an undercover cop. I give him my passport, simultaneously searching the crowds for the familiar face of […]
Posted inGeneral
Let’s pretend it’s curry wurst dripping through her scarf?
Sometime in 2008, a Muslim woman clad in a hijaab (head scarf) was verbally abused in the East German city of Dresden by a German-Russian named Axel W who called her an Islamist, a slut, a terrorist and some other politically erroneous nonsense. Marwa el-Sherbini, an Egyptian national who was married and working in Germany, […]
Posted inGeneral
I wasn’t born to scream Islamophobia
There are those sick of hearing that colonisation made Africa a cuckoo’s nest and every new African leader a dark shade of Jack Nicholson. There are those equally tired of hearing a non-white person cry wolf (racism) every time he/she is treated with disdain at work, at the mall or during sex. People treat each […]
Posted inSport
Is she the man she’s waited for all her life?
Once upon a time, a child was born to happy parents in Masehlong, in the Limpopo province, northern South Africa. As a young child, Caster Semenya understood she was different from the other girls. While the other petite girls were relishing their new socks at preschool, Caster was already the high jump champion in the […]
Posted inGeneral
Betting on jobs, girls and bandwidth at the casino
KwaZulu-Natal always leads the pack. With the economic recession, the province has the dubious distinction of playing host to not only the most job losses in the country, the most non-functioning traffic lights, the most street name changes and in a bid to not to be outdone, we also applied to play host to the […]
Posted inGeneral
I am sick of my anti-terrorism kit
So I am standing behind all shapes, sizes, colours and obviously nationalities at Dubai International Mall, otherwise known as Dubai International Airport, waiting to surrender my boarding pass to get on this Emirates flight to Frankfurt. In front of me is a small family: an old woman flanked by her two sons. The woman wears […]