Too few people seem to take the work of those two inimitably emancipatory thinkers, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, seriously. And I am not talking about those nit-picking academics who engage with them at an analytic level to argue about whether they got Marx right, or Foucault, or Deleuze, and so on. What I mean […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Exorcising cancer cells in Government relations
Whilst we are on the topic of getting rid of rogue elements within the government and its agencies: how about… Another Special State Capture Report (the Report) (led by the Public Protector with the services of a retired Justice of the Constitutional Court enlisted as the Commissioner, together with the services of two practicing Senior […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, Gender violence, General, Lifestyle
Sexual orientation discrimination is never just that
In the late nineties, Prof Francisco Valdes from the California Western School of Law, set out to address what he saw as a dangerous loophole in American anti-discrimination law. The loophole existed in the context of sexual discrimination laws. At the time, discrimination on the grounds of sex and gender was outlawed, but, as a […]
Posted inBusiness, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, News/Politics
Tim Noakes vs Dr Ferdinantus Booyens – the curious machinations of the Health Professions Council of South Africa
It’s astonishing how much effort the Health Professions Council of SA has put into pursuing Tim Noakes, even to the extent of announcing a victory before judgment is handed down. They’re not usually that dedicated though. Take a look at the bizarre case of Dr Ferdinantus Booyens, who dominated the front page of Durban’s newspapers […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Media
Remembering Howard Preece
Remembering Howard Preece 16.09.1939 – 07.09.2016 Oxford-educated and incredibly sharp, Howard Preece for a time dominated economics journalism in South Africa. The former editor of the Rand Daily Mail’s finance section won the economics section of the Sanlam Awards for Financial Journalism often, and the overall award four times, starting in 1975. He was editor […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General
Our fragile economy demands leadership with strategic foresight
Economic prosperity for any nation is not an outcome achieved on the basis of one policy focus and strategy. It is a result of a carefully chosen and managed set of development drivers and priorities in a complex system with a causal network of linkages that must work together to deliver the economic growth and […]
Posted inBusiness, General
A Student Bank to fund free education
#FeeesMustFall is a continuation of the campaign waged by historically black universities. The objective of this campaign is to problematise the current tertiary education funding model. The current funding model places an undue burden on poor, working class and middle income household students. The NSFAS loan model has become a debt sentence for economically poor […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, News/Politics
We can fund higher education without it being free
For some time now, I have been concerned with how tertiary education is funded in South Africa and called for the matter to be reviewed with urgency on numerous occasions as we were sitting on a ticking time bomb. It seems that bomb may have exploded. Having said that, this isn’t a simple challenge […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Marikana: Moment of reckoning with whole extractive system
Marikana widows want BASF to admit its complicity as part of the platinum supply chain. The extractive sector in post-apartheid South Africa remains a hotbed of labour and environmental exploitation, with people still working underground in unsafe, unhealthy conditions. Mining communities continue to be excluded from having a fair share of the wealth accumulated from […]
Posted inBusiness, General
Tackle inequality vigorously to reduce racism and other social pathologies
A unique characteristic of South Africa as a society is the racialised structural inequality and unemployment inherited from the apartheid period. It was an intended and planned outcome of a warped strategy and a set of policy positions designed and rigorously implemented to achieve it. In a very weird way the outcome was hugely successful […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
How Pokemon Go has changed the behaviour of millennials overnight
If you are yet to hear about Pokemon Go by now, you must have shut yourself off from all media and people for the past week. Since its phased roll-out launch a week ago, Pokemon Go has taken over the news, the internet and the lives of Millennials the world over. The free to play mobile augmented […]
Posted inBusiness, General
Brexit, capital as meta-body, and mytochondria
So it did happen in the end. Brexit. Against expectations, judging by the polls immediately before the referendum on 23 June. But looking back, it is not surprising that it happened. Most of those voting to leave are older voters, whose emotional ties to a Britain before the “free movement” immigration from European Union countries […]