I have fallen into the trap myself: become so outraged by government mismanagement that I wanted to beat them with the biggest stick I could: “It is worse than it was under apartheid!” Unfortunately, this is not what “worse than under apartheid” communicates to most South Africans. It is all too easily read as “better […]
Brent Meersman
Brent Meersman is a writer based in Cape Town. He is co-editor of GroundUp.org.za and a columnist for This is Africa. His most recent novel is Five Lives at Noon (2013), and his previous novels are Primary Coloured (Human & Rouseau, 2007) and Reports Before Daybreak (Umuzi-Random House, 2011). He has been writing for the Mail & Guardian since 2003. Follow him on Twitter or visit www.meersman.co.za
Posted inMedia
Press clubs are for public engagement, not political intolerance
Following the fracas after Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson refused to enter the room or speak at a Cape Town Press Club breakfast until an opposition MP had removed himself, there is suddenly talk of the press club being some kind of front “infiltrated” by opposition politicians. ANC national spokesperson Jackson Mthembu, the office of the […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Nuclear is so Third World
Our government, it seems, may be dangerously close to repeating the e-toll fiasco with nuclear energy. As with e-tolls, by the time the pubic wakes up to its implications and how it effects them, the contracts are signed and the citizenry is on the hook for billions. Bad planning in energy needs is not unique […]
Posted inGeneral
Give me South Africa any day
Commemorating South Africa’s 18th year as a democracy this past week calls for a patriotic blog post, as does the e-toll interdict which delivered a sweet respite and an appropriate present for May 1 to the labour movement for exerting their right to protest. Owing to apartheid, I have never been much of a conventional patriot […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Frank Chikane’s cautionary tale
Thabo Mbeki “looked like a soldier who was ready to die, if he had to, for the sake of his country; a lamb to be slaughtered for a cause”. This is Frank Chikane’s description of his leader waiting for word from the ANC on whether Mbeki was to step down from office. Chikane, who was […]
Posted inGeneral
Letter to South Africa from Auschwitz-Birkenau
It has been pointed out by others that within living memory, Europe was the heart of darkness. So-called civilised Europeans, who read Goethe and listened to Beethoven, set about exterminating millions of their fellow human beings. These commentators also point out that in Africa no gas chambers and ovens were ever built, and some go […]
Posted inGeneral
Homosexuality is African
Anyone who says that homosexuality is un-African is racist. We have an enormous body of historical and scientific evidence for the existence of homosexuality in every culture on every continent and stretching back in time as far as the human record goes. Homosexuality may not be normal, but it is natural. The South African government […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Please, no God: not in our courts, not in Parliament, not in government
One of the great ironies of organised religions is that their adherents can only live in peace within a secular state. Those states that embrace a faith are usually at war with themselves or at war with others. Where governments adopt religion, they tend to corrupt and pervert that religion until it becomes something almost […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The ANC’s “second transition”: promise, threat or propaganda?
1 The chain-reaction set off by the release of the ANC policy discussion documents last week, the foundation course for the party’s “second transition”, was to be expected. Headlines and tweets speak of “mining grabs”, “resource nationalism”, a “full scale attack” on the constitution, and the “path to a failed state”. Some say it is […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The unions: For whom do they speak?
When it comes to the Tripartite Alliance, Oscar Wilde’s observation that the proper basis for a marriage is a mutual misunderstanding seems rather apt. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has himself used the matrimonial metaphor. When Zuma invites the unions to join the national executive council (as he did this past week), he is extending […]
Posted inBusiness
An apartheid beneficiary’s guide to the budget
Who is an apartheid beneficiary? Anyone who was classified “white” under apartheid benefited from the system. Do we include their children almost two decades after apartheid was officially abolished? The answer must be yes. It is the moral stance. (German youth were faced with a similar dilemma. It took time. The first generation after World […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Courting disaster: Is there a con in Constitution?
No head of state, whether they’re a monarch, an elected president or the ruler of a party in office, can be happy seeing their decisions made null and void or the laws they pass overturned by some other authority. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama said, “With all due deference to […]