By Mark John Burke Owen is a good friend from my childhood, school and, even later, university years. We had very much the same interest when it came to girls, subjects choices, future dreams and, most importantly, American comedy. At a certain stage this fondness of cheap entertainment included a sitcom of the animated yellow-coloured […]
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Obama, please don’t break our hearts
by Bright Simons The enthusiasm that greeted the election of Barack Obama, the first and only American president with an African name, was palpable across Africa. Everywhere you travelled you heard and felt a new wave of positive sentiments about the possibility of a great new era for doing business between Africa and America. One […]
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Game of Thrones and the brutalisation of popular entertainment
Few would disagree that the hit fantasy-adventure TV series Game of Thrones is, from a purely aesthetic point of view, an outstanding achievement. Its production values are top notch and the acting and scripting are of a consistently high standard. Certainly, it is a yardstick by which the impressive advances made in television entertainment over […]
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Is hierarchical democracy an oxymoron?
I sometimes wonder if the constitutional notion of “participative democracy” is not just an impossible, idealistic dream. We are eighteen years down the road since our 1994 elections and the only hard evidence I have of my participation in our new democracy has been making my mark on a few ballot papers. The countless thousands […]
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Zille: Three tweets to the wind
By Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh After the DA leader’s first Twitter-related faux pas, describing voters as “supporting the ANC because they were given KFC”, I winced, bit my lip, and continued with my day. After her second slur, depicting Simphiwe Dana as a “professional black” for apparently trading on her race in criticising the Western Cape government’s […]
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Apartheid for better or for worse
I have fallen into the trap myself: become so outraged by government mismanagement that I wanted to beat them with the biggest stick I could: “It is worse than it was under apartheid!” Unfortunately, this is not what “worse than under apartheid” communicates to most South Africans. It is all too easily read as “better […]
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The press club that is not a press club
By Rams Mabote Imagine walking into a butcher shop only to find that it is actually a morgue, in spite of the signage outside. Worse still, how would you feel if you took your car for a service only to realise that the place advertised as a workshop is actually a chop shop? Do you […]
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PSL set for an epic finale
So the PSL season is set to close with another bum-clencher of a finale. The defending champions, Orlando Pirates, enjoying something of an Indian summer when it comes to trophies recently, are set to put their fans (this writer included) through the emotional shredder once more as they go up against their oldest rival Moroka […]
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Turkish delight too
It was like entering a futuristic cave, where a culture’s history washes over visitors in a ceremony of initiation, making it a pleasurable sensation of assimilating its distinctive perspective on the world. It was dark when we entered, but only momentarily, before a feast of colours cascaded, as if from nowhere, dappling faces and surfaces […]
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Video takes hold in the enterprise
After a somewhat drawn-out rise in initial adoption, video is used with increasing frequency in the enterprise today. The market now seems to have hit a tipping point, with giant unified communications (UC) vendors getting in on the action. Mass adoption is likely to follow soon, along with significant changes in the ways we do […]
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Let’s think about our children
The story of Rego Modise of Rustenburg has me worried about the future of our kids, black and white, in South Africa. Rego is a 17-year-old black school girl who loves playing hockey as a sport. She sees herself as a professional hockey player one day, perhaps even representing South Africa in future Olympic games. […]
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The economic week in review: Unsettling
The week began with elections in France and Greece that cast fresh doubts on Europe’s ability to contain its ongoing debt and economic crises. The week drew to a close with a slew of disappointing data in China. In between, the United States sent out mixed signals and South Africa reported a rise in unemployment. […]