Now that my loved ones are safely in another country, I feel free to return to record the facts, fables, foibles and fantasies of surviving in South Africa. I put blogging on TL on the back-burner eight months ago after threats on my life and my children from supporters of Jacob Zuma. My landlord has […]
Llewellyn Kriel
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
The last blog
This is my last blog on Thought Leader. I never thought the day would come when the tentacles of oppression would silence freedom of expression, but as long as I have family in this country, the increasingly sinister, menacing and credible threats from the ANC, Jacob Zuma and their legions of thuggish operatives cannot be […]
Posted inMedia
A new dawn
I suppose one could say notoriety has its own rewards or one media’s waste is another’s windfall, but that would be self-indulgent codswallop. The fact is I start off on a new road today — television journalism — as I join what looks like an outstanding team of journalists at e.tv in the sub-editing and […]
Posted inGeneral
Thin end of the pledge
Having withheld from commenting on the pledge issue, I ask myself if such a thing could help heal my country as it gets sicker by the day. Friday was one of lowest points this year, as members of my profession, our craft, exposed their racist hearts and were endorsed by an amoral autocrat thug who […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
The pain of being right
The worst part about being a “pessimist” is you keep being proved right. I’m pretty sure that deep down inside this “pessimist” is an optimist crying to get out. He only needs a motive — not an alibi or an excuse or empty promises or false comparisons or even options. Just a valid motive. Like […]
Posted inMedia
And they said it couldn’t get any worse
The plague of rancid undesirables unleashed by Zuma Simpson’s rise to power and now squirming out of the woodwork took another dangerous leap forward yesterday with the announcement by a shady clandestine black racist group calling itself the Forum of Black Journalists that it was to be addressed by old Showerhead himself. Joining the ranks […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
‘False face must hide what false heart doth know.’ (Macbeth Act 1 Sc 7)
Johannesburg — The rand was more than 3% weaker against the dollar in late trade on Wednesday after Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s budget speech in Parliament. The rand weakened to a 16-month worst level of R7,9225 a dollar — after closing at R7,6625 on Tuesday — with traders predicting the local currency could break above […]
Posted inMedia
Fighting Nero in the newsrooms
I am a wimp, but I love being interrogated. Not the fingernail-ripping, electric-mattress kind of interrogation, nor am I into squash balls in the mouth, handcuffs and nurses with whips. I love having my views and opinions dissected, questioned, probed and looked at from different viewpoints. Somehow the process, which is actually quite taxing, helps […]
Posted inSport
Proudly South African again!
Just when we need it most, hope has burst on to the South African scene in the form of the sunshine start of the 2008 rugby season. While our politicians are indubitably the scum of the earth, a malignant, avaricious cANCer and the archetypal kakistocracy, and our organs of the state are terminally leprous with […]
Posted inGeneral
Could it be …
In a strictly hierarchical culture, the name of the game is follow the leader. Irrespective of how he/she/it became the leader, by fair means or foul, hierarchies are premised on the unshakeable belief and unquestioning acceptance that “the leader” embodies the best of that culture or society. Baboon troops, whether the vast hairy hordes of […]
Posted inGeneral
Could this be my last blog?
I have a T-shirt brought back from the Newseum in Washington, DC, that reads: “Trust me, I am a reporter”. It’s the one I am wearing in this month’s issue of Empire, the boldest and most adventurous and fecund new magazine to hit South Africa’s bookshelves in years. After so long we have a magazine […]
Posted inBusiness
First Eskom, now Telkom — who’s next?
I have promised to reveal what one good or positive trait of mine I would willingly relinquish if given the chance to live my life again. I failed on my promise … and therein lies a parable. I have been offline again — thanks entirely to the unimaginable incompetence of Telkom, its ingrained policy of […]