General

Can you feel it? I don’t know about you but I can. I can sense it in my bones and in the air. Cricket season is in full swing, a time of joy, sunshine and this season, squishing English ambitions. However, like the days following a trance party, in the silence that is all you […]

Once again we are waking up to find that a man has been raped while being held in police custody. Worse he was in the holding cells at Graaff-Reinet police station rather than the local prison where it is not as easy to keep prisoners under scrutiny all the time. According to Inspector Mornay Van […]

“Dear Rod, This week will be the last week for your lessons. So you need to give all the students scores for this term. Thank you for what you have done for our school. Joy.” I received the above email at 11am on Monday 4 January and my last day of employment and earnings is […]

I think I may have come up with a solution to South Africa’s endemic speeding problem. It’s not billboards reminding the poephol in the Porsche screaming by at 190kmh that speed kills. It’s not speed cameras, or Metro Cops sleeping next to the road at regular intervals. No, the solution is much, much simpler. All […]

Anthea Jeffery commits 634 pages to a study of the “people’s war” in the South African context in an attempt to debunk what she claims to be a false conception of how the ANC gained power, the nature of the political violence that characterised South Africa from the 1980s up to 1994, and a special […]

In Either/Or, Volumes I and II, Kierkegaard constructs different models of human existence. They seem to be primarily intended by him as mirrors in which his readers may recognise themselves, or as fictions which could function as indications of different ways in which individuals may live their lives, with a view to highlighting the implications […]

Sport, being the great equaliser that it is, simply waits for no man and respects no reputations. This time last year, the world was Graeme Smith’s oyster as he led a team brimming with talent, luck and confidence to burst Australia’s bubble in unforgettable fashion in their own backyards. But was it unforgettable? Certainly for […]

2009 revealed some incredible things to the ordinary person. It was a startling year jam packed with scandal, drama and some serious historical events. A blog is just too short to list all of them, so excuse the number of links here. Hope you enjoy. We learnt that… Nothing is impossible. Nobody is predictable. Nobody […]

Here are some predictions for 2010. The crystal ball was unfortunately more greasy than usual, so take these with a pinch of nerves and keep that tongue close to your cheek. In January, Darrell Bristow-Bovey formally returns to the literary scene with the publication of a new book called I Am My Own Wife. It […]

In the vast majority of criminal justice systems across the world, a person who is mentally disabled to a degree that they are incapable of appreciating right from wrong in terms of the law, is deemed to be incapable of committing the crime for which they are charged. Moreover, and even if the above is […]

A British man will be executed in China in the early hours of tomorrow morning when a shot is fired into the back of his neck. Akmal Shaikh, who was arrested in the Chinese city of Urumqi for being in possession of 4kg of heroin, was only advised of the “good news” on Tuesday. That […]

So much for dubbing Copenhagen Hopenhagen at the recent UN world climate change conference — judging by the lukewarm “accord” that was finally “accepted”, the hope was disappointed. Just how serious this failure to arrive at a strong, international, legally binding agreement really is, is difficult to over-emphasise. What it demonstrates is the accuracy of […]