By Adam Wakefield South Africa has one of the world’s highest Gini coefficients, a measure of disparity of wealth. Placed second behind Namibia in 2005 (according to the CIA World Factbook), while much has changed in South Africa in the following six years, a disproportionate number of South Africa’s citizens still live in poverty. If […]
Reader Blog
On our Reader Blog, we invite Thought Leader readers to submit one-off contributions to share their opinions on politics, news, sport, business, technology, the arts or any other field of interest.
If you'd like to contribute, first read our guidelines for submitting material to this blog.
Posted inNews/Politics
From the ‘chief slut’ herself…
By Umeshree Govender Some time back, while Facebook-crastinating in the lab, as one does, my friend, Stuart MacDonald sent me a link to an article on SlutWalk Toronto. My initial reaction to the Toronto police officer’s remark that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised” was a rather defiant “Oh […]
Posted inGeneral
The new Thought Leader
By Aliki Karasaridis We’ve launched a new version of the website which has had the same basic design since 2007. But it’s not just a new look and layout … it’s also a big upgrade so it’s much more stable and secure. The stats system has been completely overhauled and all the missing stats have […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Strauss-Kahn: What’s French for ‘it’s complicated’?
By Michelle le Roux A few things we all know: survivors of sexual assault should expect to have their sexual histories interrogated for evidence of promiscuity or provocative behaviour. So too the scrutiny of their personal circumstances to demonstrate unreliability, previous instances of “crying wolf” or lack of truthfulness. We’re told to ask these questions […]
Posted inNews/Politics
UCT students bullied into anti-Israeli boycott
By Amanda Ngwenya What is Rael, a group of Israeli students promoting dialogue, came to offer the students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) their perspectives on the conflict in Israel primarily as a response to anti-Israeli activity in South Africa. The meeting sparked much interest among the student body, especially as a […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
‘Calling it Slutwalk has made it the success it is’
By Mvelase Peppetta When Canadian police officer Michael Sanguinetti said “don’t dress like a slut”, he’d made a huge mistake. In fact he’d touched that rock the women who’d made their way up to the Union Buildings in 1956 had warned against. Sanguinetti’s words, uttered a few months ago when giving university students safety tips, […]
Posted inLifestyle
The sustainability farce
By Mark Peach Sustainability in a developing country should surely be concerned with more than recycling, nature preservation, endangered species and sources of energy. Important as these are, they are almost irrelevant to people barely living and in horrific conditions. Yet many in the sustainability industry moan that they are unable to “engage” the poor […]
Posted inNews/Politics
COP17: Business, govt must work together
By Bjorn Stigson An important topic for discussion during my recent South Africa trip was the17th Conference of Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is being hosted in Durban this year. COP 17 is important in order to steer a course towards a sustainable world. But scepticism surrounds […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What do WE know about the London riots?
By James Duminy The recent acts of insurrection, violence and looting in London have drawn typically shocked and patronising condemnation from all corners of the newspaper-reading classes. “Isn’t it just shocking that people can behave like this? What must their parents say?” A particularly pernicious discourse has emerged to describe these events — the vocabulary […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Hackney is everywhere
By Aragorn Eloff What is the crime of looting a corporate chain store next to the crime of owning one? — Luther Brecht The sheer volume of commentary from across the political spectrum has made it hard to keep up with — and even harder to know where to stand on — the widespread riots […]
Posted inGeneral
Why Google can’t let + #FAIL
By Antonio Petra The future of the web is connected platforms. This is a bold statement, I know, but it is human nature to need parameters whilst at the same time revolt against institutions whose parameters are too onerous. No one platform can ever be an entire digital experience for users, for many reasons, aside […]
Posted inGeneral
How Anders Behring Breivik brought us closer together
By Siri Linn Brandsøy In a book by Norwegian author Jon Michelet in 1989, a young man with twisted environmentalist ideas makes his way to an island, just off the coast of Oslo, where he plans to kill several innocent people. If someone had told me something frighteningly similar was about to happen in Norway, […]