Posted inGeneral

The sad state of SA sport

I have been watching very closely the ability of sports “managers” getting worse and worse. To my mind pops Boxing SA, Athletics SA, rugby at most times has had some question hanging over it although not in the last eight or so years, SA football and now we have what I believe to be the […]

Posted inGeneral

Taking on ‘Gareth Cliff on Everything’

It is far easier to collect books than to actually read them. Recently, even the most bookish of my friends report some measure of difficulty in reading a book from start to finish. These are not people who have spent their lives eschewing books. Many of us spent our teenage years lapping up classics with […]

Posted inGeneral

Understanding the brand conversation

Successful migration to a consolidated communications infrastructure begins and ends with successful communication. This sounds like a simple statement, but it carries with it many layers of complexity. Internal communications, the lifeblood of any organisation, is the first mission-critical factor. It should incorporate staff at every level, from security workers through to maintenance, marketing and […]

Posted inGeneral

Use French rugby form-book as braai paper

Any punter who suggests that the All Blacks beating France in Sunday’s Rugby World Cup final is a “sure thing” has obviously forgotten that if there is one thing that you can always bank on when it comes to Les Tricolores rugby, it’s that there is absolutely nothing that you can bank on. Every time […]

Posted inGeneral

How I fell out of love with SA cricket

By Muhammad Choonara I was seven years old; I remember Clive Rice and his team being paraded around Kolkata with garlands around their necks. Millions of Indians took to the streets to welcome the South African cricket team. I had no idea what cricket was, we grew up in a soccer home, Chelsea, Man United […]

Posted inBusinessEnvironmentGeneralLifestyleNews/Politics

Things aren’t alright

I’ve been writing for Thought Leader for roughly two years, and consistently on the same types of issues. I write about consumerism, “affluenza”, climate change, environmental degradation, oil and coal addiction, and the politics of eating meat — and after each piece, when I go through the comments, I’m left with the same overwhelming feeling: […]

Posted inGeneral

Business communication goes social

Social media has already become widely used in business, but its impact will be felt even more pervasively in future, as unified communications and other applications find a natural home in a social setting. Currently, the main business applications of social media are marketing, networking and information gathering. A year ago, LinkedIn was thought of […]

Posted inGeneral

Can one be autonomous in Foucault’s ‘carceral’ society?

Is it possible for individuals to be autonomous today, when evidence suggests that the vast majority simply fall in step, like goose-stepping stormtroopers, with the latest techno-fashions which, in turn, function like sugar-coated pills to lull people into passive, Matrix-like, politically impotent behaviour in front of their PCs or with their iPhones in hand? But […]

Posted inGeneral

Final(ly)

I have held reservations in the last two weeks about the appropriateness of the Rugby World Cup but in looking at other sports it is the general trend that it is a “once-off” tournament which has no bearing on world rugby. It just means that for the four weeks of the tournament the winning team […]

Posted inGeneral

God wants your vote

Does God have a vote? That’s the provocatively flippant title to an analysis on the role of religion in a secular South Africa, published in the liberal Helen Suzman Foundation’s Focus magazine. To any South African the answer would seem blindingly obvious. Not only does the local version of the deity have a vote, but […]

Posted inGeneral

CSA is pulling a Safa

The cricket season hasn’t started as well as Gary Kirsten would have hoped. Rusty South Africa were outplayed by Australia at Newlands, and while I belong to the school of thought that doesn’t care about Twenty20, there are many others who do. The Proteas would have had another opportunity to put their first mark in […]