Reader Blog

By Clare Ballard Many South Africans remember well the story of Steve Biko’s death on this day in 1977. He died from massive head injuries, which, it was ultimately revealed, had been sustained during his 22-hour interrogation. The death of this extraordinary man exposed the brutality of the apartheid regime, particularly the ruthless and violent […]

By Dr Unni Karunakara The current emergency unfolding in and around Somalia is being portrayed by many aid organisations and the media in one-dimensional terms, such as “famine in the Horn of Africa” or “worst drought in 60 years”. But only blaming natural causes ignores the complex geopolitical realities exacerbating the situation and suggests that […]

By Ayanda Sitole City Press’s attempt to appease the public by reporting that the incident in which self-titled Facebooker “Eugene Terrorblanche” posed over a black child in a hunting pose, was a family “joke”, is seriously disturbing. The provocative image, published on the front page of last week’s Sunday Times, showed an unnamed white male […]

By Fiona Snyckers Some recent attempts by the media to condemn Constitutional Court Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on the basis of certain carefully excerpted snippets from his judgments have placed me in the parlous position of seeming to side with those who would go easy on the perpetrators of violence against women and children. As a […]

By Joseph Dana There is an old joke about two stocky Austrian men walking down a street in Vienna. One of the men turns to the other with an open newspaper and says, “Here you can see again how a totally justified anti-Semitism is being misused for a cheap critique of Israel!” Slovenian philosopher Slavoj […]

By Jan Radley I was amused by the humour and irony in a recent Madam and Eve cartoon. The contention was that Malema is responsible for much of what is wrong in South Africa, a notion which was tested without success in the particular cartoon. One can only hope that the amount of publicity bestowed […]