General

William was one of the hardest workers I knew. He simply loved working with his hands and believed it kept him young. He was always looking for extra work, was a sharp negotiator for the highest wage and I remember him cutting back the privet hedges of our home not long after Marion and I […]

Recent media reports that have received international exposure have indicated that Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba is spearheading a bill, drafted and spurred on by the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) and its missionary director John Smyth, to effectively ban PC and mobile access to pornography in South Africa. The draft “bill” is […]

When Diego Maradona weaved his way through six England defenders to go and score what is arguable the greatest goal in Soccer World Cup history, he chiselled his name amongst the gods who have taken to the soccer field. He is undoubtedly the finest player to have emerged from his country and maybe in world […]

In the last two weeks all of South Africa bore witness to two remarkable rugby events — that far from being incidental, as a consequence of the Soccer World Cup change in venue requirements — had a Super 14 rugby semifinal and final being played at Orlando Stadium in Soweto. These two events, each with […]

The news spread across the country like wildfire: Benni McCarthy has been left out of South Africa’s final 2010 Fifa World Cup squad. My hat goes off to Carlos Alberto Parreira for making what must have been a very difficult decision. McCarthy, for all his petulance, is probably the most skilled football player South Africa […]

On Friday a woman on the train repeatedly slapped a disabled man. She then spent twenty minutes of train ride justifying her actions very loudly to all of the other passengers and trying to recruit others to support her reaction. Need she have done this? The man in question is a frequent train beggar. He […]

SA should turn East for inspiration in fertility matters. No namby-pamby, touchy-feely, wishy-washy nonsense from the Chinese: one child per family and that’s that.

Based on a true story Tom became fearful when his father picked him up from school, Boksburg High. He could tell straight away there was something wrong again with dad. It was often in the evenings that something was not right about his father: it could be seen in his father’s face through the windshield […]

In a Time article on the worrying debt situation in Greece — and the wider implications this has for Europe and the world — Nicole Itano, Lisa Abend and Michael Schuman observe that: “Perhaps the biggest worry of all is the chance that the Greek crisis is a window into the future of the entire […]

This is a three part series about Danielle Nierenberg’s visit to the Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network in Pretoria, South Africa. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. Part I: Working to connect farmers, researchers, and policy makers in Africa The Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) lives […]

So Zapiro’s latest published cartoon (a re-run from December 2009) presents Bafana Bafana as a pack of dwarves among the giants in the upcoming Fifa World Cup. In email conversations with friends (whose sports knowledge is way ahead of mine) they regard Zapiro’s humiliating presentation of Bafana Bafana as spot on. Bafana Bafana is only […]

I have never been pick-pocketed. Sure, part of that could just be luck, given the reputation of countries I have lived in — South Africa, England and China — or those I have visited. But I do know I am very careful, wily in fact, about where I put my wallet. But we all know […]