Posted inGeneral

DA: The mouse that roared

Some years ago, former president Thabo Mbeki scornfully dismissed the DA as a “Mickey Mouse party”. Even party leader Tony Leon’s caustic rejoinder that Mbeki was heading up a “Goofy government” could not altogether remove the sting from that taunt. Things are looking quite a bit different now. Even Thabo would concede that the DA […]

Posted inGeneral

Thoughts on a colleague’s murder

Just using the word “colleague” when referring to Lucky Dlamini comes across now as presumptuous, even hypocritical. When he was alive, he was just the taciturn cleaning staff member who came in once a day to empty my rubbish bin. I barely did more than grunt my perfunctory thanks, half-annoyed at being interrupted. Lucky was […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Germanophobia is also a problem

Crass and insensitive comments by radio talk-show hosts unfortunately surface from time to time. One of these, brought to my attention in my capacity as anti-Semitism monitor at the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, was in response to reports that one of the World Cup venues had run out of beer. While I can’t cite […]

Posted inNews/Politics

J K Rowling owes me big time

“Jewish author’s estate accuses Rowling of plagiarism” was one of the featured stories in today’s Jewish Telegraph Agency bulletin. According to this, Rowling got her ideas from a 1987 book by Adrian Jacobs (since deceased) entitled The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land. This is not the first time certain people have […]

Posted inLifestyle

Remembrance of cringes past

All of us have had experiences in our lifetimes that we would very much prefer never to have happened. Who has never wished it was possible to go back in time and, as it were, push the delete button, erasing certain unwanted episodes as if they had never been? Here, I am thinking specifically of […]

Posted inLifestyle

Embarrassing surnames

One can only pity the wretched rugby commentator in straight-laced 1930s New Zealand who, on reading the Springbok team list, was confronted with the name “Ebbo Bastard”. “This one, I think we’ll call Smith”, was what he actually said in the end. In a previous post, I recounted my ordeal over once having to ask […]