On Thursday, voters will decide whether Scotland will secede from the rest of the UK — a union that has lasted several hundred years. Although this doesn’t seem too important for people outside the UK, there is the potential for great change (or disaster?) following the outcome of the poll. While some South Africans have […]
Thorne Godinho
Thorne Godinho has been a struggling freelance writer, blogger and editor for years. He completed his law degree at the University of Pretoria, and is embarking on an LLM focusing on the intersection between law and democracy at the University of Cape Town where he is a Claude Leon Scholar in Constitutional Governance. Thorne is a committed social liberal. He writes in his personal capacity. Follow him on twitter: @ThorneGo.
Posted inNews/Politics
Isis and the end of history
In 1989 Francis Fukuyama proudly proclaimed that the world had reached the “end of history”. As the USSR fell into disarray and the Iron Curtain came tumbling down, the world was catapulted towards the acceptance of a liberal democratic political model and the neoliberal economics of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It is of course […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Lindiwe Sisulu and the myth of ‘welfare queens’
Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is no stranger to the spotlight. Despite being one of the highest-ranking female leaders in the ANC, the spotlight tends to follow her for all the wrong reasons. And that’s why I’ve always watched her carefully. The daughter of a political dynasty and a surviving doyenne in the continuous internal struggle […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, News/Politics
Should we ban boys-only schools?
I’m often accused of making sweeping statements in my writing; as if one were always required to produce a table full of numbers and statistics to underpin one’s thoughts. On the contrary, theory is grounded in thinking – not just numbers and balance sheets and calculations. However, there is often an interesting intersection between what […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
How to challenge your whiteness…
I am a white South African man, and when I wrote about the problems of white masculinity I faced a barrage of abusive tweets, threats and even a phone call to one of my work colleagues to complain about my writing. Ironically, all of this proved the argument I was making. More importantly: it proved […]
Posted inGender violence
Relationships of violence: Why abuse counts
If you combine anger and power in a petri dish you often get violence and abuse. You can take it further and combine a history of male shame, violence as a means to end oppression, and outdated notions of masculinity and the results are pretty scary: you end up with a nation of angry men […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A ‘good story’ to tell – for some
I must admit, the ANC’s election moniker (you know, that it has a “good story” to tell) makes me very angry – probably much more than it should. In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, and the feeling that we’ll never again experience such collective unity or progress as a nation, the ANC’s election spin […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
The uncomfortable truth about white masculinity
Africa Check has published an article intimating that white women are more likely to die at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends and partners. This, and other research, directly challenges the notion of a “white genocide” carried out by “unknown black men”. Lisa Vetten, the researcher behind the article, along with journalist Nechama Brodie, Professor […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A queer understanding of community?
By Matthew Clayton* & Thorne Godinho** It should come as no surprise that South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex community is stratified along similar race and class lines as the rest of South African society. The big umbrella that is the LGBTI term actually falls short of being big enough to cover white […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, Lifestyle
The powerful politics of love
South Africans have woken up each morning for the past month to the intimate politics of love (and loss) on their television screens and newspapers pages. The death of Reeva Steenkamp and the ongoing trial has placed questions of love and how we love at the centre of the social consciousness. Although unrelated from the […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The intimate and unbearable shackles of racism
You know this scene all too well: you’re in a supermarket and the person in front of you whispers a racist epithet under their breath. Apparently black shop clerks are to blame for shopping rush hours. Or you stumble into a serious debate where accusations of racism are used as a distraction to shut down […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Transforming our (white) academic spaces
The ongoing saga at North West University (which I wrote about, here) is not the by-product of fun student traditions; it is as a result of the appropriation of a political salute (sieg heil) by students in residence greetings — despite the fact that this salute is problematic because of its link to Nazism. These […]