By Anthea Paelo An Eyewitness News’ headline caught my eye the other day, “Zim home affairs call deportations ‘inhumane’”. Being a foreign national myself, I’m drawn to news articles like this but with the careless disregard of a person confident of their legal status in the country. This changed one weekend last month. It was […]
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 inNews/Politics
‘Start with the room you’re in, change that conversation’
By Suntosh R Pillay “We have too much faith in leadership. It lets us off the hook so we can say someone else messed up.” This was the warning of Rama Naidu, a panellist at the third annual Conversations for Change in Durban. An initiative of The Mandela Rhodes Community, it was held amid tense […]
Posted inEnvironment, News/Politics
Eskom and Sasol put a low price on life
By Alex Lenferna How much is a human life worth? How much is our future and that of our children worth? Well, the answer to both is “not too much” if Eskom and Sasol’s pollution-friendly tactics are anything to go by. Allow me to explain. On paper, South Africa has some pretty decent environmental legislation […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Grieve, thy beloved country
By Judy Sikuza In 1994 a colossal death occurred in South Africa. The subject befallen by fate’s calling was none other than Accused Number 1948 – universally known as apartheid. The fall of this stupendous monster came with a promise of the new — a rainbow nation South Africa — where our differences would be […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Illicit capital flowing out of Africa often benefits foreign investors
By Antonio Macheve Jr The US-Africa Summit in Washington DC has built enormous expectations for the development of Africa, particularly in what concerns economic ties, trade relations, investments and business between the nations of the African continent and the US. Despite enormous human-rights violations, conflict, widespread disease and other ills commonly known to Africa, the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
iANC ayisafani
By Kelebone Lekunya I first knew of the liberation movement called the ANC when I was a teenager. I’ve noticed lately that it takes a very different form. Back then it was a party associated with equality for all, non-racialism and non-sexism. I was told tales of its principled and brave leaders like John L […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A personal reflection on the election
By Kelebone Lekunya Twenty years ago South Africa was ushered into the era of freedom and democracy where old guys like Nelson Mandela voted for their very first time in their seventies. Of course that freedom didn’t come on a silver platter: it was paid with the ultimate price of the blood of martyrs like […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment
The mining multinationals in Mozambique: Is it a win-win situation?
By Antonio Macheve Jr The generic stories of multinational companies extracting natural resources from poor resource-rich countries often maintain a strong emphasis on exploitation of cheap labour, environmental degradation, poor local economic and social development, and unresponsive corporate social responsibility policies as the most direct effects of such operations on the population, particularly around the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The DA-Agang arranged marriage
By Judy Sikuza As folklore will tell you, arranged marriages have always been a contentious matter — whether you are for the idea or against it. But politically, this old concept of an arranged marriage may have some fascinating consequences for the political landscape of South Africa 20 years into democracy. What is one supposed […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Don’t be another Mandela
By Kelebone Lekunya I think we have to acknowledge the big role that Nelson Mandela played for the “liberation” of the blacks and whites in South Africa. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should be obsessed with him to the extent of thinking of everything as being Mandela. The man played his part and left us […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Hands off the estate tussle between the Mandela children
By Melo Magolego One uneventful day on a busy street in Bophuthatswana there lay, riddled with bullets, the body of my grandfather. My paternal grandfather had two wives and was a migrant labourer. Before retirement, he made his way by delivering those cast iron manhole covers which we use to obscure our sordid secrets. He […]
Posted inNews/Politics
So we booed the president…
By Melo Magolego On December 10, 2013, I, like thousands of others, descended on the pavements of Johannesburg. We made a long walk, a pilgrimage to the memorial of uTata Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium. As we bore witness to the dignitaries present, the unrelenting rain made us feel as though we were in a […]