By Amori Marais The grip of calamities is tightening across the world: Covid-19 is causing a global pandemic; parts of Australia are (still) burning; and war continues its reign. Additionally, there are individuals who, on a daily basis, are confronted with famine; drought; minimal access to running water; and other natural disasters, such as floods, […]
Equality
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, News/Politics
At the trough or the bowl
Imagine for a moment that the human race was extinct and that instead in its place several billion humanoid pigs had taken up residence on planet earth. Pigs, yeah let’s say pigs — or dogs, or cats or birds for that matter, it doesn’t really make a difference. Let’s say that these pigs (or dogs […]
Posted inEquality, Health, Media
A new chatbot can answer your awkward questions about sex and HIV
By Mamakiri Mulaudzi, Ebenneza Kofi Okyere-D, Peace Kiguwa, Janan J. Dietrich You know how it can be super awkward to chat to someone about sex related things? Well the team at the PHRU (Perinatal HIV Research Unit) at Wits University has fixed that. Imagine that you are 22-years-old and living in Soweto. Your parents probably don’t […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General
Hate and hatred
Black people are angry. White people are angry. Indian people are angry. Coloured people are angry. Chinese people are angry. It would seem that South Africans of all races are angry. There is so much hate and hatred welling up inside each South African, that at a moment’s notice anyone could tweet a harshly worded […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, Health, Lifestyle
Social and emotional skills will improve education and grow our economy
Dr Gloria Marsay People faced with adversities in developing countries struggle to bridge the gap between education and work. A key challenge for 21st century schools involves serving culturally diverse students with appropriate transferable skill domains, i.e. deep human skills and advanced technical skills essential for economic empowerment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (#4IR), as described […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, Tech
Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’
The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
‘Aquaman’ and American superheroes
On the way back from a conference in Berlin just before Christmas 2019, I was catching up on movies on Qatar Airlines — a carrier with exceptional leg-space in economy class, so I could sit comfortably, at least — and I managed to select a number of excellent recent films, including Marc Webb’s Gifted (2017) […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Trump: The Emperor without clothes
Everybody knows the story of the emperor’s new clothes — where a vain emperor contracted two so-called ‘tailors’ to make him a new set of clothes, not knowing that they were con artists. By flattering the emperor about his handsome appearance in the supposedly new clothes, when in fact there was nothing, and assuring him […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health
Working with men towards ending violence and promoting positive masculinities
By Refiloe Makama & Sipho Dlamini Violence has remained a longstanding characteristic of the country. Gender-based violence (or more accurately: violence perpetuated by men against women and children and other male persons) appears to be on the rise, xenophobic attacks spring up all around the country, and other contact crimes saw an increase in the […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General, Health, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Searching for a new political cosmology
This morning my eye caught a report about Brazil’s climate-change denialist, neoconservative president, Jair Bolsonaro — evidently in an attempt to divert attention from his own egregious responsibility for the fires that rage unabated in (what is rapidly ceasing to be) the Amazon rainforest — accusing Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘paying’ non-governmental organisations to set fire […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, Tech
Walls and razor wire, or acceptance of different others?
Two days ago, November 9 2019, marked 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the irony has not escaped some people, that today one witnesses walls going up again everywhere. Nick Miller, in the Sydney Morning Herald (November 2 2019), for example, writes: Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, pulling the […]
Posted inEquality, General, Health, News/Politics
South Africans should stop thinking in terms of race
It was with a heavy heart that I read the news, first, of Herman Mashaba’s resignation from the position of mayor of Johannesburg and from the Democratic Alliance (DA), and soon afterwards of that of both Mmusi Maimane (leader) and Athol Trollip (chairman) from their respective leadership positions in the DA, and from the party […]