Bert Olivier

In the course of reading some of the reports on Julius Malema’s hate speech trial, it struck me that there was something that was woefully absent from the evidence — pro as well as contra — given in its course. At the outset I should stress that I have not attended the trial, and that […]

Last night I was privileged to listen to naturalist and film-maker David Attenborough (famous brother of the equally famous Richard Attenborough) who is visiting South Africa. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of (natural) Science at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Sir David, who drew sufficient people to fill five venues, in four […]

In his recent book, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (2010), David Harvey — Distinguished Professor at City University of New York and one of the world’s most cited thinkers — puts paid to any idea that anyone may have had, that the most recent global financial crisis, that started in 2008 […]

In an age when sophisticated new technologies enable engineers, architects, medical doctors, physicists and molecular biologists to simulate virtually everything that their respective disciplines pertain to, from building designs to protein molecules, the Japanese tsunami comes as a cruel reminder that there is, after all, something real out there. And this “something” sometimes behaves in […]

Protest on the part of the citizens of a country is a way of making their displeasure or grievances known to governing authorities, whether these have been elected or occupy their positions by inheritance, as it were, in the case of royalty. In the case of despots abusing their governing positions beyond the level of […]

If anyone ever wondered what Foucault’s description of modern, “disciplined” society as one structured by “hierarchical observation”, “normalising judgement” and the “examination” amounts to in contemporary terms, they should read Renata Salecl’s intriguing book, Choice (2010). Salecl provides a reconstruction of the social scene of today in which one can inscribe Foucault’s insights, in the […]

It is possible to place the incipient revolution in Egypt in a wider historical and philosophical framework — one that is very illuminating regarding its potential for liberation as well as renewed oppression. The conceptual framework I am thinking of here is that of “modernity as crisis” — a notion encountered in different guises and […]

Three years ago, when I travelled through Egypt, I had an enlightening conversation with an Egyptian. He was working as a guide, although he had a master’s degree in Egyptology, and judging by his articulateness (and I am talking about his English), could easily have held a university post. Because he came across as a […]

Just what a blind species we are — in the sense of showing hardly any capacity for foresight — was brought home to me again recently when I read a short article in TIME magazine on James Cameron’s visit to the province of Alberta, Canada, at the request of indigenous peoples, to see first-hand the […]

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” — Karl Marx Both the intelligence and the ethical integrity of the human race are sadly lacking, as far as I can tell. Sure, there are many exceptions — millions, probably — but their numbers are vastly outweighed by […]

In previous posts, I have argued that, at this stage, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which Facebook has succeeded in exposing users to more (potential, if not probable) attention from companies marketing commodities or services than they probably anticipated, have no more than financial or economic objectives, but that the potential for extensive social […]

Like all oxymorons, the oxymoron (literally:”sharp-blunt”), “liberal communist”, seems to combine the impossible. And yet, as every lover knows, Shakespeare’s “sweet sorrow” of Romeo and Juliet’s parting is all too real. So, too, the fact that liberal communists, who ironically call themselves by that phrase, are an all too tangible part of our world. As […]