Posted inMedia

Memories

Today I’m leaving the Mail & Guardian Online. I’m moving to London, for the adventure and the work experience. Don’t worry — I’m by no means a disillusioned South African. I love it here and I will be back. For the last Between the Pages podcast, Tony Lankester asked me to sum up my 10 […]

Posted inGeneral

And then the racists came …

Not long ago I remarked to a colleague that I had not run into much trouble while moderating reader comments on Thought Leader. Apart from the occasional personal insult or such, readers were mostly contributing well-reasoned and interesting comments, putting forward their views without attacking Thought Leader bloggers or other readers unfairly. Sadly, in the […]

Posted inMedia

A world without sub-editors

I have, stored away safely in my head, a list of people who should be dragged into the street and shot. Don’t worry — I am not declaring war on women, Jews, lesbians, Russians, Republicans, rightwingers or communists. It’s simply a list of those around me who were seemingly born missing a significant quantity of […]

Posted inLifestyleMedia

May these sheep all run off a cliff

I hate sheep. Afrikaans sheep, to be exact, and more specifically, Christian Afrikaans sheep. Some excellent thoughts have been shared on Thought Leader in the past week on Rapport editor Tim du Plessis’s firing of columnist Deon Maas for sharing his thoughts on satanism, resulting in a vehement SMS and email campaign by readers that […]

Posted inLifestyle

Pop career or public torture?

I’m not an Idols fan. The seemingly endless weeks of elimination rounds, public voting frenzy, teary-eyed wannabe pop stars going back home to whatever little dorp they came from … it leaves me cold. However, I must confess to being fascinated by the initial auditions — the ones that are replayed incessantly on the Idols […]

Posted inGeneral

Service, please

It’s sad to see how little our public servants care about their jobs. And here I’m specifically referring to the little people, not the ministers or heads of department. These are the men and women who man counters, operate cash registers, print licences and take thumbprints. I recently had the misfortune of having to renew […]