By Guy Chennells This article is in continuation of a debate that I must admit I’ve only partly followed. It’s about race and being South African. If you know what you’re going to say in response already, this is not for you. If you feel a gnawing hunger for an unsure offering, like it’s a […]
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1994 to now: How did we get here?
By Balt Verhagen In Who am I? Kopano Matlwa Mabaso chronicles her hopes and bitter disappointments since 1998 when she started high school. This prompted me, a person three times her age, to recount some of my own experiences during the same period when “we were well settled into our new democracy”. Around 1998 I […]
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CSA reform and a fresh start on the cards
The announcement of Heyneke Meyer as the new Springbok coach on Friday overshadowed another important day for Cricket South Africa (CSA), with it being the last of oral submissions to the sports ministry’s inquiry into the bonus saga that has afflicted the organisation. Judge Mervyn King, South Africa’s authority on corporate governance, while not taking sides during his testimony, […]
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Will the new Thabo Mbeki please speak up?
Former president Thabo Mbeki is creeping back into the intellectual spotlight. His pronouncement on the issue of knowledge production at the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Knowledge Management Conference recently has generated much heat and light. His utterances have, rightly, put a critical spotlight on the role of academia and business in not only generating […]
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Creating a successful contact centre
The quality of the consumer’s contact centre experience defines a significant portion of overall brand value – far more so now than was the case a few years ago. For most brands, the defining contact centre challenge is to move away from a paradigm where customer service is a gritty and unpleasant coal face experience, […]
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The politics of confusion
It seems politics has become nothing but a crusade in confusion, confusing the very same people who voted politicians into office. Politicians get caught up in the fruitless and wasteful game of politicking while bravely maintaining the lie that they are working for our interests. I must start by saying we need to understand that […]
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Weathering the South African Weather Service Amendment Bill storm
By Steve Pike The people have spoken, and the government has listened. But the question remains: has the South African Weather Service (Saws) listened? Positive outcomes in Parliament are pending after the public hearing last week on the draft South African Weather Service Amendment Bill, driven by assurances from ANC MP Johnny de Lange that […]
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“Philosopher” Stephen Hawking pronounces philosophy dead
At the recent philosophy conference at UCT in Cape Town, philosopher Callum Scott, from UNISA, presented an intriguing paper – “The death of philosophy: A response to Stephen Hawking” – on the 2010 book by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam Books). In a nutshell, Scott offered a critique of Hawking […]
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Some questions about Heyneke Meyer
Four years ago, Heyneke Meyer was one of the two final candidates for the position of Springbok coach. Politics played a role and post a very strong era of Bok rugby, we threw our success away for political gain. On January 27, 2012 the South African Rugby Union (SARU) appointed the man that should have […]
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Julius Malema: Why he will be missed
Juju bashing isn’t as much fun as it used to be. If you type Malema into Google, the second suggestion the browser makes is “Malema jokes”. The latest one is that his girlfriend has twins and Malema is wondering which of them is his. I’m not entirely comfortable with such jokes; I know some people […]
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Ubuntu, a cliché not a philosophy
Ubuntu, like many other words and concepts one comes across at a young age, has been a part of my reservoir of knowledge for so large a part of my life that it is impossible, save with the intervention of hypnotherapy, to pinpoint the first time I heard or understood it. One rarely came across […]
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Who am I?
I was born at Mamelodi Day Hospital in 1985. At a time when the apartheid government was getting anxious about the longevity of their antics, when the people were realising that perhaps they could really beat this thing, when everyone, white and black alike, could feel that the air was different. There were many of us […]