ON Thursday 19 September, South Africans heard why this remains a country where its people are still living in constant fear. Two decades of African National Congress self-interest and bungling have failed to curb crime, despite the asinine claptrap with which SA’s minister of police Nathi Mthethwa insulted the country. Millions of ordinary South Africans […]
Environment
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, News/Politics
Peeking under the line
By Aragorn Eloff Earlier this week I received a Facebook invite for an event that, noble as it seems, left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Here’s the invitation for “Live Under the Line“, an initiative by the religious organisation Common Good Foundation: “Did you know that there are currently 13 million South Africans […]
Posted inEnvironment
Is climate change all a ghastly mistake? Someone please tell me
In the early days of TV in South Africa, ie the late 1970s, a programme portentously called “Is the Ice Age coming?” was screened. After watching it, and being of a naturally panicky disposition, I spent a long time afterwards worrying about our imminent freezing to death. Had I been born twenty years later, I […]
Posted inEnvironment
The bees are disappearing – a lesson on life
It seems that the most arrogant of creatures, erroneously titled “homo sapiens sapiens” (the doubly wise human, supposedly), who is proving daily that cleverness does not equal wisdom, may have set in motion a process (among many others) that, if it continues, may eradicate one of nature’s marvels, the honey bee (Apis Mellifera). And not […]
Posted inEnvironment, Tech
Ecuador, ‘our rainforest’ and growing money on trees
It was an incredibly bold plan to begin with, and heart-breaking when it failed. Rather than drill for oil in the Yasuni rainforest, Ecuador would keep the forest intact and biodiversity flourishing in exchange for compensation of $3.6 billion. That’s roughly half of what the country would have made if the drilling went ahead. Earlier this […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General, Lifestyle
Chess the thing for Joburg inner city
Indifference is a powerful weapon, easily injected into entire atmospheres, hearts and minds. Since the beginning of The Troyeville Bedtime Story, a never-ending Joburg tale that began with a stinking pile of neglected rubble in 2011, my eyes and heart tend toward what appears to be impossible, dysfunctional, overwhelming. I am long suffering from a […]
Posted inEnvironment
Three scary numbers
Last week I came across three numbers that left me numb[1]. Together they brought home the essence of the climate fix we’re in — and the massive profit margins that are riding on us failing to deal with the challenge. In essence it’s about the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere, and the […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
What art you talking about?
The 31st of July was the deadline decided on by the South African Department of Arts and Culture (DepARTment) for arts practitioners and institutional responses to a revised White Paper they made available (in very limited fashion) earlier in the same month. There was nothing normal about the process but nothing abnormal either. Because this […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Health
Waiting to inhale (Part 1)
By Gillian Schutte It’s a blistering hot afternoon when we arrive at the Barracks. This regimentally built cluster of council houses was erected in Wentworth in the 1970s and used to temporarily house part of the community that was forcibly removed from Cato Manor to Durban South in the 1974. Thirty-six years later the same […]
Posted inEnvironment
How enset can save Ethiopia
Hunger is expensive: The World Food Program (WFP) announced recently that child malnutrition in Ethiopia costs 55.5 billion Br every year. That is 16.5% of the gross domestic product: nearly a fifth of the country’s earnings. Ironically, hunger also disproportionately affects small holder farmers: The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that half […]
Posted inEnvironment
How do ‘world-class cities’ deal with their waste?
The waste crisis in my own suburb in Jozi has abated … for now. Last Friday residents flurried about with their stinky, overloaded bins in obviously excited gratitude as the Transman truck heroically crested at the top of the hill. I rushed to tell my neighbour from across the street to bring her bins out, […]
Posted inEnvironment, Health
Dan Brown’s Inferno: This might be fiction, but it’s a wake-up call
“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321) With this epigraph from Dante, Dan Brown begins his recently published novel, Inferno, which deliberately takes its name from one of the three parts of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. It is […]