I recall a discussion I had with a friend about why she didn’t want to write yet another article on race and racism. Her view was that it had all been written. She said the problem was that the people who continue to argue that race doesn’t matter and that we should just “move on” […]
TO Molefe
TO Molefe is a Cape Town-based freelance writer and editor. He is the author of Black Anger and White Obliviousness, a Mampoer short on how race matters in public dialogue in post-apartheid South Africa when black anger, white obliviousness and politics are at play.
He is currently writing a narrative non-fiction book themed around race and reconciliation in South Africa. It should be out towards the end of 2014.
Follow him on Twitter: @tomolefe
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Busker by-law? There is no busker by-law
This started out as an admonishment of Cape Town residents for our tardy outrage and showboat sense of civic responsibility. We turned up in huge numbers, I was going to say, when city law-enforcement officers publicly assaulted and arrested Lunga Goodman Nono, but where were we when the laws and regulations he supposedly fell foul […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Beware the boy who cries ‘Zulufication’
In Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a shepherd boy alone on a hillside tending to sheep called on people in a nearby village to help him chase away a wolf that was attacking his flock. There was no wolf of course. He was just doing what bored shepherd boys are tempted to do […]
Posted inGeneral
No miracle arose in SA’s transition from apartheid
We can’t ask him, because he’s six-months dead, but I’d be surprised if Mgcineni “Mambush” Noki thought South Africa’s transition from apartheid was a miracle. I didn’t know him at all, so wrapping my thoughts around his shoulders, as I do now, as he did the blanket that earned him the nickname in the press […]
Posted inBusiness
Amplats passing the buck after pocketing the rand
No wonder Anglo American Platinum, the world’s largest platinum producer, is fixing to lay off at least 14 000 workers. According to the Chamber of Mines of South Africa, the remuneration of a mineworker increased by an average of 30% each year between 1999 and 2011. I highly doubt the average mineworker increased his or […]
Posted inMedia
The revolution will not be retweeted. RT this if you agree
Azza is an Egyptian media professional and blogger I met in Berlin this year, in early spring. As clunky as it may be, more so to point it out, I mention the season for its symbolism. Spring is a time of renewal. In the spring young shoots sprout from where old, frost-bitten branches hang and […]
Posted inBusiness
Commercial news media, like the SABC, also answer to his master’s voice
Everyone’s favourite whipping boy, the SABC, has done it again. Unspoken commands from the outside have barged in and, at the last minute, dictated an editorial policy. Either both the Metro FM show’s producer and host neglected to acquaint themselves with the said policy, or the policy did not exist until five minutes before the […]
Posted inGeneral
‘I’m not racist but…’
The defence of the indefensible. This is how George Orwell described political speech and language. But such is not the sole domain of politicians. The verbal gymnastics used to justify bigotry often reminds me that within us there exists a potential muddier of thought against whom we must guard steadfastly, lest we defend or commit […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We are the leaders we’re waiting for
It’s poor form for a so-called writer not to be able to express this without beckoning the aftertaste of half-digested Gouda but so be it: we are the leaders we’re waiting for. This is true and has been said many times, often with a Coelho-esque earnestness that’s left those with the misfortune of hearing it […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I benefit from the failure of the basic education system
It’s time to admit it. You’re white and you benefited. This is the challenge that Roger Young and Leonard Shapiro have set for white South Africans. The pair created and is selling T-shirts that read across the front: “I benefited from apartheid.” They say the T-shirts are their attempt at beginning “an important conversation about […]
Posted inNews/Politics
South Africa, a democracy only in form
I’ve come to despise elections because they’ve been used to warp democracy. Invariably, each time I’ve said this, one of you lot has had a conniption because you’ve misinterpreted this as me saying people should not vote. Don’t assume. Read — and exercise your atrophied comprehension muscle. There’s an accounting principle known as substance over […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma’s ‘clever blacks’ lost in media translation
Considering the Babel of languages spoken in South Africa and how each developed verbal cues and connotations in state-sanctioned isolation, I think we’d all do well to ask, before assuming, if we’ve understood what the other is saying. This goes doubly so in instances when we think the other person has said something preposterously outrageous, […]