Michael Trapido

Gambian president Yahya Jammeh has threatened to behead gays unless they leave the country. He claims that Gambia is a country of believers and that these practices are sinful and immoral. Whatever your beliefs this much is true — an African head of state is proposing, as acceptable conduct, that members of his community, be […]

Xenophobia and crime, like everything else in South Africa, can be brought under control relatively quickly if the necessary desire exists at government level. Unfortunately, in too many areas this does not appear to be the case. Statistics guiding the government have, for a long while now, confirmed that supporting Mugabe destabilises the region and […]

Why is it that at the first sign of things getting hairy, the calls go out to send in the army? Does anyone actually think about the signal they’re sending to our fellow South Africans by deploying troops against these communities? The current xenophobia problem in South Africa arises, primarily, out of the government’s failure […]

The more I read about the xenophobia issue, the more I realise why the rainbow nation is experiencing teething problems. We are so busy putting labels on things that we miss the real issues. “Xenophobia”, “racism” and “criminals” abound in every article we see, but very few actually deal with the problems of Alexandra, Soweto […]

Wading through the tons of articles on xenophobia, I am of the view that while some — such as Jacob Zuma, the ANC as a party, Cosatu, AfriForum and Patricia de Lille — are hitting the nail on the head, others are just taking gratuitous pot shots at the people of Alexandra without any insight […]

As a regular visitor to Alexandra as a criminal attorney, I decided to go in there yesterday and find out from the guys on the ground why they were so angry, and put the allegations of xenophobia into some form of context. As we all know, nothing happens in a vacuum and people who are […]

South Africans have in the past always prided themselves on being gracious hosts to the many tourists and people from around the world who choose this country as their destination for a holiday, or even a place to live. Currently, however, we are witnessing an outbreak of xenophobic attacks on a scale unprecedented in our […]

British prime minister Gordon Brown, having just led his party to its worst local election’s showing in 40 years, witnessed its most dire polling since records began in the 1930s and having had a brief glimpse of what the Cherie Blair and John Prescott’s sure–to–be–bestsellers have in store for him, could be excused for thinking […]

I actually needed three sources (News24, the SABC and iafrica) to confirm that I hadn’t misread President Mbeki’s views on Zimbabwe, as given to al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. In essence it confirmed that the people of Zimbabwe were to solve their own problems and the rest of the world were simply there to assist. Staggering! […]

Jacob Zuma, president of the ANC, at the recent meeting of the Tripartite Alliance, praised the three members for unanimously condemning Mugabe and his destruction of democracy in Zimbabwe. They join the Pan African Parliament, African Union and even the Southern African Development Community who are now expressing the proper concerns at events in Zimbabwe: […]

President Mbeki can go some way towards restoring his legacy if he finally reaches the conclussion that Africa and the rest of the world arrived at weeks ago -– namely that there is only one result that is generally acceptable and that is the replacement of the current Zimbabwean president and parliament with the one […]