General

I meet Huwaida Arraf at the Palestinian Struggle and Human Spirit Film Festival held in the working class district of Athlone in Cape Town. It’s a chilly evening but I request we move our conversation outside. The fake Israeli soldiers harassing patrons at a replica check-point inside the foyer of the Joseph Stone Auditorium are […]

Imagine a scenario where you have murdered someone without ever believing you could, or without ever wanting to. Nevertheless, you have done it. You have done it and by some lucky chance, nobody knows. Or at least, those who do are too chicken to say so. What do you do? Who are you? South Africa, […]

By Richard Catto This month Google announced via its official blog that it would no longer be co-operating with China over the issue of filtering search engine results on Google.cn (which is the localised Chinese version of Google’s search engine). If this was not acceptable to the Chinese government, Google would close its Chinese offices […]

Now that we know that 230 000 African matric students failed last year, we can sit down to have a decent conversation about what is wrong with them. The fact that it is white and so-called Indian students who achieved straight As has serious implications for the leadership of this country in the next 10 years […]

In my previous post I said that one has to go further (as Kierkegaard himself went further) than the two Kierkegaardian models discussed earlier. More specifically, in the last section of Either/or, II — entitled “Ultimatum”, which consists largely of a “sermon” (supposedly by a pastor-friend of Judge William) with the heading, “The edification implied […]

The outrage expressed by Numsa at the latest Zapiro cartoon in the Mail & Guardian fails to take into account the extreme nature of the circumstances giving rise to its conception. If it had done so it should have been hard-pressed to condemn it as “distasteful” and “deplorable”. As things stand, we are witnessing an […]

It is most certainly a humanitarian crisis. Thousands dead. An impoverished nation battling to deal with the human carnage left behind. An inadequate health system to provide the care they need. A nation shaken to its core. But here I don’t speak about Haiti. Here I speak about us. South Africa has been shaken to […]

1. The Stormers will win the Super 14. That is the local pre-season tourney for the top 14 clubs in the Province/Boland area. 2. Rassie will dictate on field moves via strobe lights from the top of Table Mountain. 3. The Bulls machine will rumble on. Cheeky sub-eds everywhere will fall over themselves to write […]

South Africa has disasters — political, ethical and economic disasters. We have a fat ruling elite which is increasingly drifting away from the needs and realities of the poor and marginalised. We have a ruling alliance which is forever quibbling about current and future spoils — a hobby in which they engage while dressed to […]

Once in a while a game-changing product comes along that makes you rethink conventions that are pretty much hardwired into our routines. This is immediately apparent in the consumption of media — be it music, movies or print. With the dawn of the internet our consumption of these have been altered dramatically. Take for example […]

Would you do something great if you knew nobody would ever know? Would you find the cure for cancer and share it without putting your name on it? According to many philosophers (Hegel being the most adamant on this subject) we don’t do anything unless we are going to get recognition for it. We want […]

1. In an attempt to quell the simmering leadership tensions, Cope will adopt a rolling substitution policy for its top positions. The Rev Dandala will deny that this undermines his leadership in any way and offer that it is a shining victory for democracy. 2. Upset at having to wait a whole 30 days before […]