For the past two decades Afrikaners have been struggling to find a new identity. Specifically, one beyond the cliché of Boertjie as a thickset, thick-skulled, knuckle-dragging, racist Neanderthal whose simple pleasures in life are slugging Klippies-and-Coke and dancing lang arm around the braai. That is, when the Baas is not otherwise engaged dragging errant farm […]
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.
Pistorius case highlights the failings of social media
Oscar Pistorius is an inspirational icon whose fierce love for his woman inadvertently had nightmarish consequences. That’s what the cloyingly vociferous fans on his website would have us believe. Oscar Pistorius is an ego-on-stilts with temper issues which, due to his arrogance, inevitably resulted in violence. That’s what his detractors punt on social media sites […]
Just trust me, I’m a lawyer…
Despite a stonewalling legal establishment, the issue of attorney misconduct is hard to fudge. The reality is that South Africa’s law societies place member interests above transparency, appear to discipline members inconsistently, and are indifferent to international benchmarks. A few weeks back this column touched on the latitude granted to the professions to regulate themselves […]
There is honour in SA’s Bangui loss
The debacle involving elite South African forces in the Central African Republic, culminating in their hasty withdrawal this week, is a reminder that more often than not the military “solution” provides anything but resolution to a problem. One does not have to delve back far to find that optimistically embarked upon campaigns often deliver endings […]
Dotty Davies gets ready to close up shop
Politicians and officialdom are not known for their grasp of nuance. This makes for inadvertently amusing acronyms to give us the occasional giggle. We have had such gems as Boss, the apartheid era’s Bureau of State Security, Saps, the hapless police force that shot dead 34 at Marikana, and Wasps, the Worker and Socialist Party, […]
How can you avoid a ‘corked’ lawyer?
Ordinary old people do ordinary old jobs. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, accountants, teachers and even – God help us – journalists and estate agents, “follow professions”. The very phrase has intimations of responding to a religious calling. These aren’t the famous “wukkers” of South African trades’ parlance. Elevated above the herd, the manner in which these […]
School kids pay the cost of political schizophrenia
The African National Congress is inclined towards self-defeating behaviour. Nowhere has this political schizophrenia been as glaring as in the government’s inability to deliver a sound basic education. The right to education is a cornerstone of the Freedom Charter, the founding document of the modern ANC. Appropriately so, since there is a surfeit of research […]
My Little Pony in the spaghetti bolognese
It started in the United Kingdom, spread to South Africa, and has just hit America. It’s a wave of popular revulsion at finding that some of those tasty beef products from the local supermarket are actually stuffed with horsemeat. There have been arrests and high-level food agency investigations. Stores have withdrawn entire lines of burgers, […]
A survival kit for the ANC
It’s crucial that a parasite controls its intake. After all, if the host is sucked dry and consequently expires, so too does the parasite. It is this self-preserving biological imperative that lies behind the African National Congress’s intention to “name and shame” corrupt civil servants. This, it claims, will reduce the amount of R30-billion that […]
Public interest in Ramphele’s movement stems from despair
Dr Mamphela Ramphele this week launched Agang, not quite the long-awaited political party that has been the focus of so much speculation, but rather a “consultative platform” that is yet to morph into one. The assessment of political commentators so far has been mostly delivered with barely stifled derision. There’s widespread agreement that Agang – […]
Catholicism’s CEO falls upon his staff
These are tough days for Christianity Inc. The product is stale, traditional markets are shrinking, and employee criminality has brought police attention. No surprise then that the CEOs are bailing out. Last year it was head of one of its minor subsidiaries, the Church of England, who unexpectedly threw in the towel. This week was […]
Who’s Mummy’s pwetty didums puddy-cat, then?
The problem with the natural world isn’t the animals. It’s the bloody people. That’s true whether one is talking about rhino poaching – a tragedy resulting from mankind’s worst instincts – or at the apparently benign end of the scale, about pet lovers – who collectively are a morass of irrational sentimentality. With the best […]