I have been thinking about lions a lot lately. Partly this is because of Melissa Bachman, and partly because I happen to be painting them at the moment, for my feminist wildlife art project. Lions are not afraid of the dark, and I envy them for it. I met a lion called Sunshine once. It […]
Environment
Posted inEnvironment
Want to help lions? For real?
Before I kick-off with this, let me state upfront so nobody can miss it: lion breeding in South Africa should be banned. The hunting of lions is clearly out of sync with middle class, Western public sentiment, and increasing their numbers merely exacerbates the problem. Breeding big cats for the gun is something that will […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Equality, General, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Ms Joburg 2013’s most ardent wish
I claim I love Johannesburg more than anyone else on the planet. I was born here. I eat these streets. I declare myself Ms Joburg 2013 — for today (you can have it tomorrow) — and here, for my inaugural address, is my ardent wish for our town: On orders from the executive mayor of […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, News/Politics
Lion hunts and other things we don’t like
All of us have that button. That thing that makes us see red, the thing we hate, which if we were in charge we’d ban immediately. In the past, people in power have been deeply offended by the notion that anyone who wasn’t white and male could have the vote. That gay couples could marry. […]
Posted inEnvironment
COP19 – the cathedral and the bazaar
The people in suits want to talk and nothing will stop them from listening to the sound of their own voices. COP19, the global climate-change meeting, might seem far away in Warsaw, Poland, this week but like a massive weather system migrating the globe its impact will be felt in Africa for sure. Africa knows […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment
The natural resource T-junction in Mozambique
By Antonio Macheve Junior Since the beginning of the current decade, Mozambique has and continues to be a key destination for foreign direct investment. The government and international companies involved in the prospection of hydrocarbons have made several announcements of significant discoveries of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin. A South African Institute of International […]
Posted inEnvironment, News/Politics
The normalisation of the unthinkable
We live in apocalyptic times. This is the considered belief of an extraordinary contemporary philosopher, who also phrases it as Living in the End Times — the title of a book that appeared in 2010 (Verso), and which contains between its covers so many intellectual tours de force that I, for one, will not even […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Lifestyle
Who are you calling radical?
The planet needs activism. It is being drilled, mined, excavated, pumped, and fracked more than ever before. Rivers are clogged with clingwrap, Simba packets, and toxic dyes; saturated with the run off from crops that are lathered in pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilisers. Forests are being wiped out: Even in the DRC where the Congo […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Health, Tech
The Arctic: Why you should give a damn
The Arctic is melting. The Arctic is thawing — reaching record lows this decade as Arctic temperatures are at their highest in the last 44 000 years. Climate change is heating our planet, and we could soon see ice-free summers at the North Pole. In their latest climate report, scientists around the world are more emphatic […]
Posted inEnvironment
Poaching, poisoning and the consequences
Recently in Zimbabwe while the country was preoccupied with its general elections, the press almost completely ignored a catastrophic chemical poisoning of animals. Ivory poachers killed more than 80 elephants by poisoning water holes with cyanide. The elephants had constituted one of the world’s biggest herds, and were slaughtered in Zimbabwe’s largest park, the Hwange […]
Posted inEnvironment, Tech
Birding for beginners
Twitching is a term used in birding circles to describe the act of travelling far and wide to track down rare birds. Twerking is a term used in birding circles to describe the act of standing in the bush with your tush in the air chasing off birds. Our hiking party did neither on the […]
Posted inEnvironment, General
Is there a crisis of credibility in the human sciences?
On a previous occasion I elaborated on the growing natural scientific evidence that the world is at “Red Alert” status regarding a looming ecological crisis. The question arises, whether the human sciences (humanities and social sciences) are in agreement with their natural science colleagues on this issue. In light of the incontrovertible evidence in this […]