An open letter to the minister of communications Dear Retired General, When I moved into a small flat in the suburb of Mowbray in the Cape back in 1998, when you were still in the army, I got to learn of a company called Dial-a-Bed. They way it works it can even be understood by…
I truly thought I was dreaming when I listened to Helen Zille explaining away her MEC’s sexual indiscretion as none of our business, using the same mouth used to condemn Jacob Zuma for having “unprotected sex with a mistress”. Equally, I had to pinch myself when Julius Malema using his motor mouth to attack Helen…
Whatever you believe is arts minister, is … Bhota Mam Lulu, “Been meaning to write to you for a while now since your dramatic promotion to handle the very complex portfolio of arts and culture for our country and the high level reinforcement through the misdeployment of the former premier of Gauteng. The two of you…
Professor Sipho Seepe’s recent article in the Sowetan that morals are not necessary for leadership in politics must rank as his poorest contribution to national debate yet, obviously blinded by his well-known support for Zuma’s ascension to power. What is comforting though is that he is not even being supported by the man he is…
One of the most irksome tasks that many governments around the world loath and execute badly is how to deal with crisis communications in the face of scandal involving high-ranking politicians such as a head of state. Armchair critics of how government functions in these critical times fail to grasp the fact that no PR…
The last twenty years have seen the death of intellectual debate in South Africa. In the book The Poverty of Ideas, edited by William Mervin Gumede and Leslie Dikeni, a set of authors mourn this death by tackling head on the uncomfortable issue of the “devaluation of ideas in the public sphere in post-apartheid South…
The harassment of e.tv journalists to produce the criminals who were part of their exposé is a direct result of the knee-jerk reaction that our crime fighting strategy has become in South Africa. Someone must have briefed the government security cluster and said that rough street justice is going to win the day. I am…
So the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa is demanding that Zapiro apologise for drawing what so many are talking about in private: the utter abuse of state institutions, office and the Constitution. This assault on and degrading of constitutional order was highlighted by the call for a political solution to President Jacob Zuma’s…
Funny thing I must say to discover that the minister of basic education is “disappointed at the matric results”. Besides sucking up to Malema during the election campaign by publicly and irresponsibly saying that matric “is not that important” she set a bad example early last year by abandoning a crucial meeting of the council…
Enough has been said about how the first year of Cope’s existence has been a rough ride characterised by a mix of leadership difficulties as well as a sense of disorganisation at both administrative, strategic and policy levels. So how should Cope fix these obvious impediments that have made its founding year an overall disappointment…
