Let me say upfront that I know that I am treading on dangerous ground. But by leaving things unsaid, we are saying something about those things. How many of you reading this know Oliver Tambo’s birthday? My guess is that not many. My anecdotal research has shown me that many of us know the birthday […]
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya is an Orlando Pirates supporter who earns a living as an associate editor/sports editor for the Mail & Guardian. He has never made promises that his love affair with the Buccaneers will not affect his professional judgement when carrying out his responsibilities, and he is not about to. Like many who swear by that proud institution of our people, he is sometimes mistaken for a die-hard supporter. One either supports Pirates or they don't. There is no middle ground.
Posted inGeneral
Krol: The turning point for beloved Bucs
There is a tendency in South African football to use one’s knowledge — or rather ignorance — as analysis in itself. If you know a name of a player or a coach, then that person is good. If you don’t, he is bad. You might remember the first time Delron Buckley and Hans Vonk were […]
Posted inGeneral
It’s football, damnit!
First, let me state here that I had nothing to do with the tag under which this blog is appearing — that of calling football socc… I can’t even write the dirty word in full. Calling the beautiful game by that dreadful Americanism is one sure way of making me unsure about writing here. I […]
Posted inGeneral
Bucs: A love unreturned
As French author and philosopher Albert Camus once said: “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football”, I too owe everything I know about life, love and loyalty, pleasure and pain, pride and prejudice to having been a football fan. I know that even if I had not grown […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Case for Umshini Wami!
I am happy that Jacob Zuma sang Umshini Wami at his inaugural speech as ANC president. I hope that he will do so again when he gives his first official address to his party’s followers on the occasion of the January 8 statement. We cannot blame the selective amnesia that prevails in this country — […]
Posted inSport
Jake White and the (other) succession debate
So Jake White has quit his job. By now that should not come as a surprise to too many people. It shouldn’t be a shock that the South African Rugby Union (Saru) will shoulder much of the blame for his decision. But what I find intriguing is the number of people arguing why Saru should […]
Posted inGeneral
Racism 101: What is racism?
My last posting suggested that the decision to scrap Soweto off the Springbok victory parade was racist. The response was predictable. There were as many who agreed as those who didn’t. Of course none of us who wrote were unfamiliar with the real reasons, so it is possible that some of us were wrong and […]
Posted inSport
Rainbow nation my foot!
Black consciousness as a political movement may be suffering from a image crisis in this age of non-racism and rainbow-nationhood, but once in a while events remind us of how its teachings remain as relevant as when they first surfaced at black universities in the 1960s and early 1970s. For it were the Zim-Zims (as […]
Posted inGeneral
Consistency? What for?
In my column in the Mail & Guardian I wrote that I was tired of blackness being an albatross around my neck (I suppose on the necks of other blacks too). The point I was making was that constant disappointments by those who expect black journalists “to know better” would be avoided if they just […]
Posted inGeneral
Don’t keep working class real
You might not have noticed, but the Mail & Guardian is increasingly accused of abandoning its leftist leanings. Now, I am not one to pronounce on the ideological shifts of newspapers or whether they are correct. I do know, though, that there appears to be a romantic view about what it means to be a […]