So there go 87 minutes of my life, wasted on a deplorable movie called 2010: Moby Dick, compliments of DStv. Based very loosely upon the 1851 Herman Melville classic, it ramps Captain Ahab and his ferocious nemesis, a gigantic albino man-eating sperm whale, straight into the 21st century. The unrepentant mariner is once again hell-bent […]
Gavin Foster
Durban photojournalist Gavin Foster writes mainly for magazines. His articles and photographs have appeared in hundreds of South African, American and British publications, and he's also instigated and researched stories for Carte Blanche.
Winner of the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa PICA Profile Writer of the Year Award in 2008.
South African Guild of Motoring Journalists Motorcycle Journalist of the Year (Magazines) 2015/16/17.
South African Guild of Motoring Journalists Motorcycle Journalist of the Year (Overall) 2015/16.
South African Guild of Motoring Journalists Motorsport Journalist of the Year (Magazines) 2017 - Runner-Up 2015/16.
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Superman se gat! Here comes SuperVaclav!
The comic book superheroes we grew up with could do no wrong. They leapt over tall buildings with aplomb, sliced through steel girders with laser-beam eyes, and stopped runaway locomotives by holding up the palm of one hand. Policemen applauded them, ordinary folk adored them, and when they slipped back into anonymity by replacing their […]
Posted inGeneral
So what’s in a name?
Would you consider allowing somebody called “Audio Science” or “Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily” to service your expensive new car? How thrilled would you be to find out that the fellow in the white coat and rubber gloves standing expectantly by the dentist’s chair was actually a magician’s son called “Moxie Crimefighter Jillette”? Would you feel […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Boats, goats and sleepless nights…letter to JZ
Dear President Zuma I’m sure you have absolutely no idea how thrilled I was this morning to read Sipho Khumalo’s report in The Mercury on your keynote address at the Richards Bay Jobs Summit and Jobs Fair yesterday. He says you “lashed the KZN business community for its lack of innovation and creativity in embracing […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
76 airbags and 11 885 words…
So what do you think about Top Gear — the BBC’s motoring show featuring the irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson and his two much-abused sidekicks? The programme is irreverent and boorish, it’s offensive, it’s insensitive to the feelings of minorities and, ultimately, it has little to do with mainstream motoring journalism because Clarkson and company never let […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
We’d love to hang ’em high…but we can’t
There’s one very good reason why we could never reinstate the death penalty in South Africa, and it has little to do with the Constitution as far as I’m concerned. It’s simply that we couldn’t properly trust or control a state killing machine capable of churning its way through the tens of thousands of brutal, […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Men in black — bodyguards without a cause
It’s always struck me as rather odd the way ANC politicians and public servants seem obsessed with security. Surely, as democratically elected representatives of the people they should feel free to walk in the streets without let or hindrance? The much-hated apartheid hierarchy were certainly nowhere near as paranoid about being assassinated as our supposedly […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Innocent until proven guilty — unless Fifa’s in town
So here we go. In the 1990s we had Kitsburghers (instant citizens) who could vote in the referendum, followed by Kitskonstabels (hastily half-trained policemen to help in the fight against crime). Now we have Kitsgeregtigheid, or instant justice, to ease the way during Fifa’s subjugation of our fair land. Steal a cellphone on Monday morning, […]
Posted inLifestyle, Sport
Berry Nieuwenhuys: The Free State boykie who almost played for England
Imagine this. You’re a youngster playing a minor club game of football in Boksburg when a man dashes on to the field during a lull in play and asks if you’d like to play for Liverpool. You wonder if he’s for real, but, of course, accept. A few weeks later, on the other side of […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Gun control — clutching at straws
As I labour away at my keyboard I can hear excited Englishmen on Sky News babbling on in the background about a much-needed revamp of British gun laws. Good! If the law is changed so as to make guns more accessible to the ordinary Englishman the authorities could in future warn him about the eruptions […]
Posted inGeneral
Shake off the 2010 World Cup hangover with Sepp!
TO: Federation Internationale de Football Association Fifa-Strasse 20, PO BOX 8044 Zurich, Switzerland Att: Mr Sepp Blatter FROM: Gavin Foster 25 March 2010 Good morning Mr Blatter I know you’re a very busy man, what with checking that nobody makes any money from the World Cup without giving your organisation a fat chunk of it, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Enough of this ‘parenting’ nonsense — raise your kids on lies!
If it were up to me, every single book ever written about “parenting” would be burnt and its author shot. I brought my kids up by following three basic maxims: never make a threat you can’t keep, always treat children like ordinary little people, and lie to them as much as you can — that’s […]