General

In 1961, Kwame Nkrumah said: ”Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world. I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal […]

The current furore in New Zealand about the country being a rip-off for tourists (so look out rugby World Cup 2011 tourists) should be taken seriously when a former All Black who played in 81 test matches says NZ is “really expensive”and suggests that pricing needs to be addressed. Former All Black Justin Marshall bases […]

Some time ago, I wrote a post called “The changing face of identity”, where I pondered the relevance of Sherry Turkle’s work on the status of identity in the age of the internet for virtual social spaces like Facebook. At the time I surmised that such spaces would not leave human social identities untouched. Judging […]

You have to feel for the Boks on tour. It has been brutal. They have been pounded in New Zealand over the past two weeks, by a fired up, never-say-die All Blacks side that was waiting to peak against the Springboks. Now they face a Robbie Deans-inspired Wallabies side in SunCorp stadium Brisbane — a […]

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution which asserted that Zionism was racism. The resolution read: “The General Assembly … determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” This resolution was passed at a time when the state of Israel was in cahoots with apartheid South Africa, it covertly […]

The Springbok performances over the last two weeks have left more questions than answers. Were the All Blacks better than the Bokke? Yes. How bad were the Boks? Not sure. How good were the All Blacks? Very good, but did they make the Boks play badly? The head-in-the-sand view is that South Africa were out-muscled, […]

To be rich would be a wonderful thing. Now, I don’t mean to have a nice car and a nice home, but really rich. Rich like a Kennedy or a Bush. Rich like the GDP of a small to medium country. Because when you are rich, when you are famous and absolutely fabulous, when you […]

By Siphiwe Hlongane We have felt it, and now it’s gone, the world cup that is. It’s time for local football fans to start gearing up for the Absa Premiership. Once again the stakes will be high, hopefully it will not become a big yawn, last season proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the local […]

Disclosure: Tim Britz, the brand manager at Clarins who kindly gave me this interview is a personal friend, and is probably on Foursquare because of my incessant hounding. I have no current commercial ties to Clarins South Africa. Congrats on getting a Foursquare pilot going. You’re probably about the fifth company in SA to reach […]

By Maureen Mazibisa and Borrie La Grange How strange it would be if the players in a World Cup winning side were to meet just five days before the deciding match for the very first time to train together and then take the title with a convincing victory … But when Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) […]

A South African tourist, Tayla Storm, died in New Zealand after a lengthy battle with a rare infection. The tragedy for her and her family will be felt for many years to come. The clumsy cliché of the previous sentence reminds me of how words simply get in the way of expressing how we feel. […]

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 exposed particular weaknesses in the global financial system, regulatory regimes and some government’s inability to effectively respond to the economic misery imposed on the global populace by the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The general global populace carry the burden of failures not of their […]