General

Africa is part of the developing world. When given the opportunity – likely to be opened up to a greater extent than before by the Fifa World Cup being staged in South Africa — to allow foreign investment here, as well as in the rest of Africa, would it be an unadulterated blessing, or should […]

One of the great successes of the 2010 World Cup — and there have been many — is how the special courts which were set up for the tournament have succeeded in dealing with the criminal activity that is part-and-parcel of hosting an event of this magnitude. And the good news is that South Africans, […]

South Africa is a unique place in that there is a blend of cultures and creeds here that you cannot find anywhere else in the world. Sadly for football fans, SA is now also home to the unwanted and unique record of being the only hosts to have not progressed beyond the group stage at […]

So with Carlos Alberto Parriera’s tenure as Bafana coach at an end, questions are inevitably being raised as to who should succeed him in accepting Safa’s poisoned chalice. As is usual the clamour is growing for a local coach to succeed Parreira. This of course is based on nothing but misguided patriotic fervour. Of course […]

Why doesn’t God pay tax? I’m not suggesting that God actually does the transfer. He has elected representatives among us, apparently — and authorised them, allegedly, to collect funds on his behalf. Some of them have outfits and everything. The ruling that God’s money is safe from SARS can only ensure that shysters and thieves […]

After all Sepp Blatter’s blather about an ‘African World Cup’, the sad irony is that we are on the verge of the unthinkable: that none of the six African teams will make it through to the second round. All six pack, but no cigar — is one way of putting it. Certainly, the chiseled torsoes […]

In Leonard Shlain’s wonderful book, Sex, Time and Power (2003), he makes the following observation: “Our ancestors would … bring about the greatest mass extinction of large animals since the dinosaurs abruptly disappeared 65-million years ago. Through their ever burgeoning technological prowess, humans would plant crops, tend herds, invent writing, build the Parthenon, discover gunpowder, […]

I had a very strange experience today. It was a warm winter’s day, and we had a fire going outside. Glass of wine in hand, I was fiddling around with my iPhone (as one does — usually to one’s wife’s discontent) — specifically a cult favourite app of mine: Mood Agent. As I launched the […]

I recently wrote about the vuvuzela neither to praise nor to malign it. Mine was and still is an attempt — only an attempt — to interpret its bewitching power. It was not a perfect attempt. Otherwise I would not have come across as if I was saying people should either subject themselves to the […]

By Lenox Mhlanga Feel it … it is here! The Soccer World Cup is finally underway in South Africa. It was surely a long wait but it was worth it. If you have not caught the football bug then you must be dead, or worse. Alain de Botton, a newspaper columnist puts it this way, […]

I thought I was getting away from politics for a while. But I now realise that the vuvuzela is to these World Cup blogs what Julius Malema is to my politics columns: a noisy, but sadly unavoidable irritant. With both Malema and the vuvuzela, their importance is far overstated. Malema: South Africa’s Robert Mugabe? I […]