Reader Blog

By Bernadette Sesay* At age 18 I was told the time had come for me to go through female genital mutilation (FGM). I didn’t want to. It was my mother and maternal grandmother’s idea: they’d also been responsible for the initiation of all of my female siblings. My mother cried and pleaded with me, begging […]

By Mario Olckers With the hype surrounding South Africa’s “rainbow nation” and the subsequent disillusionment with the blatant kleptocracy of a small, parasitic black elite, what has been conveniently forgotten and deliberately ignored is the slow genocide of the indigenous San peoples and their descendants in Southern Africa. Also referred to as Bushmen, after the […]

By Timothy Nast The argument that fewer, larger local municipalities is the best way to address service-delivery problems is just another way in which the ANC is trying to hide its inefficiency to govern and deliver services. Smaller municipalities are more in touch with their residents and can be held to account for their promises. […]

By Mandeep Tiwana The indiscriminate mowing down of hundreds of protestors, including attacks on the demonstrators from the air offers an important test for the UN Security Council. As of now, the world’s most powerful body has issued a unanimous statement condemning the violence but has failed to take any concrete action to stop the […]

By Jan Hofmeyr Since it assumed office, the Zuma administration has been frequently faulted for not being able to forge a coherent vision for this country. Arguably the president’s recent State of the Nation address has been perceived by some to not alter this view. Workmanlike it was, and touching on the right issues it […]

By Robyn Burger The battery and sexual assault of Lara Logan, SA-born CBS News correspondent, while reporting on events in Tahrir Square, Cairo, illustrates the risks taken by those who bring us reportage from the frontline. While violence is not unusual in such situations, as a “sideshow” to the main event of the revolution in […]

Can the Egypt/Tunisia revolutionary model work in Zimbabwe? Many of us Zimbabweans who have watched over the years with impotent anger and often hapless bombast as the Zanu-led thug regime has desecrated every democratic ideal in its war against its own people have repeatedly asked ourselves this question. The comparisons between Zimbabwe and Egypt are […]