Submitted by Chris McConnachie South Africans are a relatively undemanding lot when it comes to our elected representatives. We can look past their dubious private moralities, tolerate their inconsistent public statements or even gloss over their past criminal records. What we do demand from our representatives, at bare minimum, is a level of respect for […]
Mandela Rhodes Scholars
Mandela Rhodes Scholars who feature on this page are all recipients of The Mandela Rhodes Scholarship, awarded by The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, and are members of The Mandela Rhodes Community.
The Mandela Rhodes Community was started by recipients of the scholarship, and is a growing network of young African leaders in different sectors. The Mandela Rhodes Community is comprised of students and professionals from various backgrounds, fields of study and areas of interest. Their commonality is the set of guiding principles instilled through The Mandela Rhodes Scholarship program: education, leadership, reconciliation, and social entrepreneurship.
All members of The Mandela Rhodes Community have displayed some form of involvement in each of these domains.
The Community has the purpose of mobilising its members and partners to collaborate in establishing a growing network of engaged and active leaders through dialogue and project support
[The Mandela Rhodes Scholarship is open to all African students and allows for postgraduate studies at any institution in South Africa. See The Mandela Rhodes Foundation for further details.]
Posted inGeneral
Aluta continua!
Submitted by Aalia Ismail Fourteen years on and what we have seen are distorted, dark-continent hypotheses-like attempts by the media to explain South Africa’s current state. This is a direct reflection of the destruction of our identity by colonial monsters further bludgeoned by our peripheral position in the skewed international political economy, as a result […]
Posted inGeneral
Global food crisis vs population growth
Submitted by Lawrence Mashimbye “No food”, “expensive food”, “unaffordable food”. Our future is jeopardised by the current food crisis. Famine seems more of a reality than ever, and if we are not prepared to change our ignorant approach toward population growth, things might even get worse. The recent food summit in Rome was full of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Where goes the continent?
Submitted by Rachel Adams In February of this year, Jody Kollapen, Chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) stated that Nelson Mandela had taken reconciliation too far and that there had been an “undue focus on reconciliation rather than transformation“. Of course in all the god-like worship that surrounded the presidency of Nelson […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I’m forced to be foreign — ranting and raving…
Submitted by Cynthia Ayeza Mutabaazi Most of us have by now read a lot about the current xenophobic attacks on “foreign” people/non-South Africans in South Africa. We have read about it in the papers, seen it on television, heard it on radio and the internet continues to carry the story across the globe. I do […]
Posted inGeneral
South Africans, here is an Inconvenient Truth
Submitted by Judy Sikuza “Woe to me who is South African! All the problems that I see and experience in my country must be sorted out. Somebody should be doing something about the crime and the violence and the poor education system? Shame, those poor people in the squatter camps. This is really unacceptable! Well, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Kenya’s animal science phenomenon
Submitted by Lionel Faull Lionel Faull stumbles across an entry in the little-known East African Journal of Animal Behavioural Science … Kenya is world famous for its wilderness safari experience, thanks to its magnificent landscapes and teeming wildlife. A new species of mammal has recently emerged, however, whose predatory characteristics have thrown the tourism sector […]
Posted inNews/Politics
On makwerekwere…
Submitted by Boitumelo Magolego The inside cover of my Oxford English dictionary features a word with which I have become all too familiar: the word is kwerekwere. (It may be more familiar to you with one of its vernacular language–dependant prefixes prepended — the Sotho singular being le– and plural ma–, the Nguni singular being […]
Posted inGeneral
Clash of civilisations? Human rights? THE WEST AND THE REST: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE
Submitted by Demaine Solomons My intention with this piece is to attempt to connect two issues that still generates a fair amount of debate and controversy; Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations article and the idea or perhaps the possibility of the universality of human rights. However, I do want to do this from another perspective, […]
Posted inLifestyle
African beauty is not in the hands of the beholder …
Submitted by Cynthia Ayeza There was a time that I believed that the idea behind the Nokia Face of Africa was brilliant as it inspired young girls to get into modelling careers. The show inevitably gave a limited variety of girls the opportunity to compete more on a physical level than on an intellectual level. […]
Posted inMedia
Student media: SA’s ugly duckling
Submitted by Lionel Faull On National Press Freedom Day last October, Daily Dispatch deputy editor Andrew Trench gave a lecture at Rhodes University in which he mentioned the “juniorisation” of South African newsrooms. As deputy editors go, Andrew is pretty young himself. But his point was that there is a yawning gap in age, skills […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Afropessimism or bust?
Submitted by Tristan Görgens Our Afropessimism has an indignant tone. South Africa has long been the home of exceptionalism. We did white, minority rule differently, we fought for liberation differently, we avoided civil war with a negotiated settlement, we taught the world about truth and reconciliation, we were the champions and purveyors of Nepad and […]