The truly fascinating and engaging aspect of being part of a democracy, is the ability to tease, convert or overhaul the status quo for the sake of requisite representation if the electorate deems it necessary. Yes, even when the electorate is said to be largely on zombie mode. The results of India’s election and the […]
Shafinaaz Hassim
Shafinaaz Hassim is a sociologist based in Johannesburg. She is the author of Daughters are Diamonds: Honour, Shame & Seclusion -- A South African Perspective (2007), Memoirs for Kimya (2009), and the critically acclaimed novel on domestic violence SoPhia (2012). Her work has been shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Creative Writing Prize and the prestigious K Sello Duiker Award 2013, and she has been awarded in HayFestivals category of top 39 authors under the age of 40 in Africa during the London Book Fair 2014. She is also the editor of the Belly of Fire anthologies for social change series, which was launched in 2011. Her research focuses on biographical narrative in the interplay between personal and political spaces and she writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has lectured and presented seminars at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, Humboldt University in Berlin and at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Posted inNews/Politics
Theatre of terror at the trial of Oscar Pistorius
The trial of Oscar Pistorius has turned into a horror movie, bringing home the reality of an alleged femicide, and the trauma of crime in South Africa. In the hero’s tale, the villain brings conflict until the hero is able to resolve. State prosecutor Gerrie Nel has undertaken this heroism in the courtroom at the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Face to face with democracy
Being South African forces one to reflect and re-evaluate, sometimes daily, how to identify, in some general and particular ways with who we are. Sum of parts, or a sore thumb, the nearly two decade’s span of freedom is a precarious space for identity. Too black, too white, not quite right, we continue to grapple […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle
Abuse of the sacred
A campaign called “Abused Goddesses” is drawing massive engagement and attention around the world. Initiated by a women’s empowerment organisation in India, called Save our Sisters, which helps prevent the trafficking of women and children, it makes use of a series of images of Hindu goddesses, Saraswathi, Lakshmi, Durga with bruises and cuts in an […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
To fix a broken working class
Some say that 20 years is not a long time to sink teeth into a fully-fledged new democracy. There have been many challenges to ignite economic growth while providing essential services to the South African nation. But the major gripe that seems to resonate in today’s times is that the powerful voice of the working […]
Posted inEquality, Sport
The sociology of soccer
A few weeks ago, I was invited to respond to a paper at a seminar jointly hosted by the departments of sociology and anthropology at the University of Johannesburg. The presenter was soccer sociologist Dr Marc Fletcher, a post-doctoral fellow in the department and his paper interrogated as part of a larger thesis, that both […]
Posted inGeneral
Racists
“Jean-Louis Belavoix had stood up amid the applause that followed Bates’s exhibition, and had begun all at once to speak in a loud voice. ‘How absurd, Mr Bates!’ He called down. ‘Are we really to believe that men differ from each other simply because of the funny angle under their noses? Is that why the […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
The Madiba Roadshow
Reality TV is funny business. Everyone in the industry knows that you score massive ratings, sometimes even in spite of viewer scepticism, when you allow an audience a window into the so-called real day in the life of a celebrity. As spectators we have a love-hate relationship with reality television precisely because it allows us […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
On sexuality and freedom
“It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.” Judith Butler: Gender Trouble. At first read, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Boston bombs refuel the trauma tank
I’ve been reading the horrific spate of bombings just this week, and recounting with terror, the images of bombings that have penetrated our consciousness through much of the past two decades at least, some in recollecting Hiroshima, lest we forget, but most notably in recent times, the never ending images from 07/07, 9/11, and in […]