It’s been a bad run for caring capitalism. An unvarnished display this week was the monstrous rapaciousness unleashed when captains of industry lack any sense of social responsibility or personal morality. First there was business boy wonder Martin Shkreli’s inadvertent self-immolation, metaphorically speaking. Then there was the slow motion crash of Volkswagen, the world’s second […]
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 inBusiness, News/Politics
Time to ease the trade union corset that confines SA
Despite the excitement generated among the British hard left by the election of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party, trade union influence has over the past two decades been on the wane throughout most of the Western world. And as in most of the developing world, it has not fared at all well in […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A high human cost to the ANC’s political pandering
One of the unwholesome characteristics of President Jacob Zuma’s administration is its brazen pandering to African National Congress special interest groups. The unions, of course, have always enjoyed a special relationship. They can trash city centres and with impunity heave rocks at their opponents, confident that their membership of the ANC’s tripartite alliance will shield […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Durban 2022: A moment to savour
South Africans appear studiously underwhelmed by the award of the 2022 Commonwealth Games to Durban. The public response has been at best a yawn, with the general tenor being snipingly negative, which is par for the course when much of our political discourse is conducted in 140-character Twitter put-downs. There was certainly little of the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Madonsela’s challenge: ‘So, are you feeling Lucky, punk?’
Lucky Montana, former chief executive of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), this week accused Public Protector Thuli Madonsela of having a tendency to “create drama”. He was responding to the findings of her inquiry into Prasa irregularities, which details more than R2 billion in misappropriated funds and lays responsibility at his door. Whether […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The stifling death grip of a dysfunctional bureaucracy
There is rarely spontaneous public applause for the efficiency and responsiveness of state entities. As well as almost limitless access to taxpayer funds, the impunity that assured employment affords, makes for public servant arrogance, sloth and waste. Combine these corrosive institutional traits with an African National Congress government that believes it has a God-ordained mandate […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
SA journalism: No agenda required
Newspaper editors aren’t much given to introspection. Whatever their political hue, they tend to have a virtually unshakeable belief that their particular interpretation of reality is the correct one. It of course makes for spectacular miscalculations, such as when Peter Bruce, then Financial Mail editor, in 1999 urged voters to support the fledgling United Democratic […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time for Riah Phiyega to swallow the medicine she signed up for
Three years ago, with the massacre of 44 people at Marikana, Riah Phiyega proved that she lacked the mettle needed to head one of the most vital organs of state, the police. Last week, when in response to a personally damning Farlam Commission report she did not resign as national police commissioner but instead pleaded […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Popular psychology for SA’s politically frustrated
Forget the Rorschach test. There’s no need to peer at inkblots to divine psychological conditions. The ANC government is a living breathing Petri dish, incubating almost every cognitive deviance to have graced a psychiatrist’s couch. Let’s start with multiple personality disorder. Or could it rather be mirrored-self misidentification, the delusion that the person in the […]
Posted inBusiness, General
ILO mistakenly assumes that its old ANC pal is pragmatic
Voters elect politicians on the basis of their proclaimed ideology. However, it is not ideology that drives government effectiveness. Rather it is how ideology is adapted to resolving real-life problems. This week’s report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is a reminder to what extent, despite all evidence to the contrary, African National Congress (ANC) […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The jewel of Africa needs to buff up its act
The situation has become unsustainable. The tipping point of an accelerated slide to failed state status is surely imminent. That means even worse economic disintegration than has already taken place over the past two decades. That means a more rapidly deteriorating security situation, with more street protests, violent wildcat strikes, burning, looting, and general lawlessness. […]
Posted inGeneral, Health
Circumcision SA style – the unkindest cut of all
It demands a certain je ne sais quoi for someone of apparently sound mind to allow a man clad in animal skins to slice off their foreskin with a rusty assegai. And that in an isolated bush camp in the dead of winter, nogal. Especially since this rite of passage to manhood comes parcelled with […]