The sparring between poseurs in the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the ANC as to who has sole naming rights to a silly red beret is more than a Tweedledee and Tweedledum spat. It’s a warning that the coming general election might be uncharacteristically volatile. A small portent was the Nkandla fracas last weekend, when […]
William Saunderson-Meyer
This Jaundiced Eye column appears in Weekend Argus, The Citizen, and Independent on Saturday. WSM is also a book reviewer for the Sunday Times and Business Day. Follow @TheJaundicedEye.
Posted inNews/Politics
It’s do nothing days in Zuma’s la-la land
South Africa’s ‘do nothing’ season, officially known as the festive break, is in effect a month-long shutdown that traditionally runs from December 16 to mid-January. The bad economic news is that this time around, it’s going to run for several months longer, at least up to the general election. With the December 5 death of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The men and women who make SA great, sort of
To mark the passage of 2013, some annual awards to the men and women who make South Africa great. Or at least jaw-droppingly memorable. The Xenophobia Award goes to the SA Police Service for reminding us that it is still possible to be too black. The son of former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni was […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A nation tires of e-toll whingers
Now that Nelson Mandela is gone, there will be no end of people claiming to know exactly what his opinion would have been on every conceivable issue. Invariably, it will coincide with the opinion that they, too, hold. But while I can’t honestly hazhard Madiba’s opinion on e-tolls, I do sense a growing irritation among […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Nelson Mandela: A death in the family
“A giant is about to depart, leaving political pygmies to divide his cloak and squabble about who is the rightful heir. The media will be wall to wall with plaudits, the world will groan with grief.” I wrote those words in a column some five months ago, as Nelson Rolihlala Mandela lay in a Pretoria […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Democratic Alliance does the Time Warp again
The normally smug and steady Democratic Alliance has over the past month metamorphosised into South Africa’s political equivalent of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This dizzying plunge through a Verwoerdian time warp was triggered by the Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEAB), which prescribes swingeing penalties for private sector companies that don’t meet the government’s rigid […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time to put a cork in Australian hypocrisy
For centuries, white South Africans blissfully mythologised their history and the effects that their arrival on the southern tip of the continent had on the indigenous people. White Australians engaged in a similarly elaborate myth-making concerning conquest. However, unlike here, whites are a majority in Australia – the white Aussie extermination of the indigenes was […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Robert McBride: In the best tradition of cadre deployment
What a silly fuss about struggle hero Robert McBride being cnominated to head the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID). So typical of racist, Eurocentric liberals not to appreciate the unique skills set he brings to the job. Confirming the Cabinet recommendation to Parliament, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said that IPID was “an important tool” in […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
IOC: Five rings and no balls. Sochi pity!
Excellence. Friendship. Respect. So whose motto is that? Boy Scouts? Alcoholics Anonymous? Who would guess that these are the watchwords supposedly encapsulating the modern Olympic movement? Actually, says the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it’s not merely a slogan, but the organisation’s ‘life philosophy’. Funny thing that, the gap between imagination and reality. While those three […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
People are listening to your calls? Get over it
So the United States is eavesdropping on your cellphone calls, Chancellor Merkel? Man up, so to speak, and get over it. More usefully, instead of whining, get Germany a new intelligence chief who understands counter-intelligence and encryption. And as your technical experts apparently warned, you also need to dump that crappy old cellphone your bought […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Woolies plunged into another Frankiestein nightmare
For the individual, strident public assertions of one’s unassailable virtue have few consequences beyond sceptical smirks and a possible shortage of dates for Saturday night. For corporations, though, it’s more complicated. In a world where consumer distrust is increasingly the norm, if such self-proclaimed corporate virtue is believed genuine, it can deliver fanatical levels of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
SAAF: From fighting force to flying farce
South Africa is to deploy three Rooivalk (Afrikaans for kestrel) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in support of the United Nations Intervention Brigade. Three helicopters. That might not sound a big deal, but it’s a rare bit of good news for an air force nosediving towards catastrophe. Dating to the 1980s and the […]