William Saunderson-Meyer

On a smaller scale, but also inspiring to the huddled masses yearning to be rich, is that some sporting administrators managed to structure matters so that they could buy themselves Mercedes E-class limousines for only R1 each. That they achieved this while their organisation was technically bankrupt surely makes their entrepreneurship the stuff of legend and business school case study?

President Robert Mugabe would cheer the zeal of Zuma’s protectors, while chuckling at their lack of legislative foresight. The Mugger of the Nation has long since made it a serious offence in Zimbabwe for anyone to demean his exalted status with zap signs, back-of-the-hand sniggers, lewd sucking noises, eye-rolling, nose-picking, earhole excavation or scrotum scratching. Arse-licking by his subjects remains tolerated, even encouraged.

Righteous public wrath can be a laudable thing, particularly when it is harnessed to compel political accountability by government. A pity, then, that it is being squandered to force President Jacob Zuma to stop screwing around, rather than to force him to stop screwing up. The past fortnight has seen a tsunami of outrage and […]

Retirement, for a world leader, used to mean writing a blockbuster autobiography and swanning around the lucrative international speaking circuit. Nowadays — ask Tony Blair and Thabo Mbeki — it is as likely to mean the threat of imminent arrest and charges before the International Criminal Court. Previously, upon the statesman’s retirement, even lifelong foes […]

The Independent Complaints Directorate has joined an array of Chapter Nine oversight institutions set up to secure SA’s new democracy, but which have subsided into ennui because the government has absolutely no intention of being constrained.

There are many reasons for the overseas media’s palpitations, bordering on hysteria, about the supposed dangers of travelling to SA. Interwoven are aspects of parochialism, ignorance and racism.

Zuma now has two self-appointed battalions of protectors flanking him, the ANCYL and MKVA. Both readily express a desire for the obliteration of their opponents.

The silly season would be incomplete without clowns. Fortunately, with Julius Malema now a permanent centre-stage feature of South African political life, there is always some buffoonish behaviour to snigger at. But no matter how unintentionally hilarious the president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) seems to be, Malema is actually no laughing […]

These animal activists, what a fuss they make about matters beyond their ken. So filled with neo-colonial, white racist presumptuousness. They arise from scoffing their Steers burgers (herds of cattle, eyes rolling at the stench of imminent slaughter, slashing and trampling in frantic but futile attempt at escape) and Kentucky Fried Chicken (a shoebox existence […]

Leaders come into power vowing to keep touch with the common herd and to listen to dissenting voices in pursuit of statesmanship, but the unguent of flattery is irresistible.