When Ernest Rutherford split the atom for the first time in 1917 he raced home to tell his wife Martha the incredible news, as you do, and was surprised to find himself walking into an iceberg colder than the one the Titanic had encountered five years earlier. “Fascinating,” being her only response. The father of […]
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Racism in schools: a teacher’s perspective
By WR Terblanche Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying […]
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10 things Alberto Contador should do during his ban
10. Spend lots of time with his wife. 9. Watch An Idiot Abroad. Brilliant show! 8. Tweet during Tour de France stages. Stuff like “@andyschleck, you know I would have beaten you today” and “@bradwiggins, b*#ch please, stop frontin”. 7. Do more sit ups in seven months than Alejandro Valverde did in two years. Apparently […]
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NHI: infected with doubt
Health systems news and health systems financing news, in particular, seldom get the nation talking. But the announcement of the imminent arrival of National Health Insurance (NHI) on our shores, and the subsequent release of the policy paper on the NHI, certainly did. And rightly so! For a country that spends a respectable percentage of […]
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Men, dogs, violence and fear
By Nadia Sanger The People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) is a public hospital in Bridgetown in the Western Cape that provides services to sick animals. There are always queues at the PDSA; the staff are over-worked and the hospital is under-resourced. Most animal guardians who cannot afford private vet fees visit the PDSA or […]
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An open letter to the dooses of South Africa
Dear Dooses You know who you are. This guy is a doos. So is this one, and this one, and these cops, these nurses, this teacher, this radio DJ, this spokesman and this pastor. At least two of our neighbouring countries are run by dooses of awe-inspiring dimensions. Noseweek should be retitled “Doos Monthly”. There […]
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What is the purpose of our education?
By Mario Meyer Tony Blair once said: “Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education.” It is well documented that the South African education system at large, and its primary and secondary public schooling system in particular, is in a state of chronic crises. A large majority […]
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City still on course for title
Howard Webb isn’t very popular in the blue part of London right now. The burly referee, a policeman, had a hand in awarding Manchester United two penalties in the second half of their clash with Chelsea on Sunday, with Wayne Rooney obliging. United threatened but Chelsea were ones who had a 3-0 lead in the […]
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Occupy Tshwane: behold the bourgeois revolution
You might think an ‘Occupy Movement’ would find fertile ground in a land as brutally unequal as South Africa, not to mention an economy virtually hostage to monopoly capital. Yet Occupy is primarily driven by an educated, salaried middle class, which has now found itself rapidly sinking into either economic ruin or, horror of horrors, […]
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Zuma’s vanity legislation casts an ANC birthday pall
The African National Congress’s centenary has not been the unalloyed propaganda opportunity it hoped for. The 100th birthday has mostly served to sear in the public mind the contrast between the ANC’s glorious past and its grubby present, as well as a rather grim-looking future. Its leaders had assumed a year-long drumming upon the ANC’s […]
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The Facebook failure
By Wicked Mike Let’s face it: Facebook withholds information so that fact and hype are difficult to differentiate. With Facebook aiming for a $10-billion initial public offering (IPO) in 2012 that would value the company at $100-billion, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, a media celebrity even before The Social Network was released, it’s easy to […]
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“That’s what you get when you mix with the blacks”
By Charles Leonard Every year on this day I think of my riot policeman – the one who tried to kill me the day then-president FW de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party and the Pan Africanist Congress, and that he was going to release ANC […]