My biggest fear in entering the debate about Jimmy Manyi’s comments on coloured people is that I will be seen as a coloured person speaking about coloured issues. My fear is that, because of this, my views will not be taken seriously. Unfortunately, our post-apartheid society has become so racialised that we no longer look […]
Ryland Fisher
Ryland Fisher is former editor of the Cape Times and author of the book Race. This is his second book, following on Making the Media Work for You, which was published in 2002. He is executive chairperson of the Cape Town Festival, which he initiated while editor of the Cape Times in 1999 as part of the One City Many Cultures project. He received an international media award for this project in New York in October 2006.
His personal motto is "bringing people together", which was the theme of One City Many Cultures. It remains the theme of the Cape Town Festival and is the theme of Race. Ryland has worked in and with government, in the media for more than 25 years, in the corporate sector, in NGOs and in academia. Ultimately, however, he describes himself as "just a souped-up writer".
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Johnny Issel: What he meant to me
The first thing I did when I heard last Sunday that Johnny Issel had passed away was to listen to my vinyl of Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier. I thought it appropriate because this was the theme song of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the early 1980s and Issel was a founder member. As I […]
Posted inGeneral
A birthday with strangers
I have just spent my 50th birthday with a group of strangers in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Well, most of them were strangers until two days ago, but by the time of my birthday on Saturday/Sunday (depending on which time zone you followed), most of them had become close friends. The occasion was an “International Dialogue for […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics, Tech
Wanted: MPs on Facebook
One of the big stories of the week, which did not get much coverage, was one that would have been funny if it was not so very sad. It had to do with the fact that 85% of parliamentarians are not computer literate. This means that only 15% of our elected leaders know how to […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Freedom still a distant dream
Now that the dust has settled on Freedom Day — April 27, the 16th anniversary of the first time all South Africans voted in a democratic election — it is worth reflecting on what it means to be free, what we still need to do to achieve more freedom and what we need to do […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
What’s in a proper noun?
Amid all the political and other chaos in South Africa last week, we missed a potentially very important story: and that involved the planned changes to Scrabble. The producers of this popular board game announced that they intend to introduce a rule that would allow the use of proper nouns, something that has never happened […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Please don’t turn the Terre’Blanche murder into a race issue
It is understandable that when one of South Africa’s best-known racist is murdered on his farm, that there are some people who will read racism into his murder. It even suits the political agenda of some people who campaign against the murder of white farmers by black people. But no matter how racist AWB leader […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why has Cape Town restricted anti-apartheid heroes to township streets?
Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and with all the doom and gloom going around, there is one issue that has upset me for a while. It’s not HIV/Aids, or crime, or violence against women, or unemployment, or the lack of proper housing for poor people, or drug abuse on the […]
Posted inMedia
I’m ashamed to be part of the media
There have been times when I have been ashamed to be part of the media industry: this week was one of those. The role that the media played in the virtual destruction of a poor family’s life in the Western Cape this week cannot be overlooked. Before he became the focus of media attention in […]
Posted inLifestyle
Lessons from India
Before I went to India, I was warned that it could potentially have a life-changing impact on me. And it did. Days after I returned from Mount Abu, via Ahmadabad, Mumbai, Doha, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, I am still struggling to get to grips with what I had experienced and how it has changed […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Understanding Allan Boesak
I am no apologist for Allan Boesak, who hit the headlines again this week after he resigned from the Congress of the People. However, I have known the man for a long time and have tried to understand his mind through all the dramas in his life. These dramas, of course, include the Di Scott […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We remain obsessed with racism
I have to admit that I did not read the report on which the Cape Times based its “Cape Town is a racist city — study” banner headline last Thursday (October 22 2009). I did try to get a copy of the report, commissioned by the Employment Equity Programme and conducted by Sabie Surtee and […]