Let’s call it the Parable of the General and the Prosecutor. It’s a sinister, yet vivid, illustration of how the tools of justice have been commandeered by African National Congress (ANC) cadres for close-quarter in-fighting, as they trample all before them in their quest for political influence. Lieutenant-General Richard Mdluli, head of national police crime […]
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
The long, slow exit of Julius Malema, the media’s secret darling
He’s in. He’s out. No, he’s in again. Out again. Half in, half out. Suspended, then rehabilitated, and now finally expelled. Whether the political career of expelled African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema is over or not, much of the media will continue to provide surreptitious life support whenever it can. His […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Don’t stray in front of Zuma’s re-election cavalcade
Elections are of course pivotal to democracy. They unfortunately can also cripple the process of government in the year that they take place, since incumbent national leaders act not according to what is necessary but rather to what is expedient. Since President Jacob Zuma’s ambitions for a second term depend on the African National Congress’ […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Africa gets a new angle on the Chinese take-away
South Africa’s gold and platinum might be doing well, but it is the rhino index that is going stratospheric. With 11 rhinos a week biting the dust and the horn going at $55 000 a kilogram, a lot of pockets are being lined. Last week local activists publicly ruffled some feathers with an advert that asks […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Sticking a rhino horn to China’s Giant Panda
Developing nations don’t hold much truck with wildlife conservation for sentimental or scientific reasons. In places where human existence itself can be nasty, brutal and short, animals are butchered without compunction and often with thoughtless cruelty. They are clubbed, shot, stabbed, fished, or slaughtered with zero regard to the long term effects on species survival. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zimbabwe: The high costs paid for ‘normality’
In photography, time-lapse exposures are a useful mechanism to make imperceptible changes unreel with new clarity before the eye. Similarly, for a journalist, a series of sequential exposures to a situation can make gradual social changes suddenly obvious in a way that microscopic study does not. After a long absence from Zimbabwe, where I used […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma’s protectors at one another’s throats
Donning a jaunty Ché beret doth not a soldier make, as the wannabe revolutionaries of the African National Congress Youth League recently discovered, when the real fighters highlighted the difference. The uMkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) in KwaZulu-Natal lashed the ANCYL’s embattled leader, saying “If it was still the struggle era, Julius Malema would […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Curb your cravings or die on your own dime
An alert to fatties, puffers, boozers and assorted body abusers. It’s time to clean up your act or piss off and die on your own dime. Why patch up slow-motion suicides when hard-pressed and limited medical resources could be better allocated elsewhere? All things being equal, someone who survives a bullet to the brain playing […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mbeki’s meekness was a critical weakness
Ousted former president Thabo Mbeki exited with quiet dignity. Privately, however, he warned of potential disaster under Jacob Zuma, who at the party’s Polokwane conference had engineered a miraculous political rehabilitation, to turn the tables on the man who had fired him. Mbeki, according to Mark Gevisser’s biography, predicted that Zuma would reduce South Africa […]
Posted inGeneral
Malema swaggers to the gaming table in the Last Chance Saloon
Expelled African National Congress Youth League leader, Julius Malema, may know how to whip up a paramilitary posse of slathering, beret-wearing fascists, but when it comes to taking strategic decisions he just hasn’t a clue. When the chips are down he behaves like an alcohol befuddled gambler in the Last Chance Saloon, rashly doubling and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Nannying the ninnies on the last frontier
South Africa is cowboy country. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, law abiding instincts are poorly developed here, on the southern tip of the continent. But the upside of being the last frontier is that we are not yet cocooned in that regulatory cobweb that has reduced much of the world’s citizens to quivering ninnies, reliant […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Corruption: The ANC just has to say no
It’s difficult to get excited about the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) recent launch of a dedicated unit to combat corruption. Like the proverbial pebble in the ocean, Cosatu’s Corruption Watch will almost certainly sink without a ripple. It will plink down next to the National Anti-Corruption Forum, the Forum Against Corruption, the […]