General

The last ten years have been marked by a strange phenomenon in black writing: a visible and negative literary portrayal of the black experience and critical assault on black identity and achievement. This is quite ironic. But black writers have, unwittingly, become enemies of everything that their people fought for. Instead, their allegiance overlooks the […]

On the eve of World Aids Day I write to you about the unfulfilled promises for which we can’t possibly only blame you … Dear Bra Aaron, One of the most appealing things about your appointment as minister is your general approachability — hence I know that this letter to you from citizen nobody will […]

South Africa has arguably the world’s most inept approach to immigration, snarled in a cats-cradle of corruption and muddled thinking.

By Richard Catto Like most avid computer users, the whole concept of trashing my computer and reinstalling everything from scratch is not something I relish doing because it is a task fraught with many technical difficulties that could easily leave one without a functional computer, which would be a major disaster, of course. So when […]

By Bryan Hadfield Some time ago, during the days of planned and unplanned load shedding, I wrote an article, published in this forum, in which I tried to throw some light on the origins of South Africa’s electricity crisis. My aim at the time was to dispel a lot of misrepresentation about the causes and […]

Below, I have posted an essay written by one of my media master’s students, Carla Zdanow, for a course in the philosophy of culture. I have placed it unmodified, to give readers of TL the opportunity to see what excellent research work is being done by some students. I have another to post after this […]

Warning: the next few paragraphs contain an extremely one-sided and highly indignant view on a contentious issue. No, I haven’t joined the Desperate Alliance or the selective amnesia support group that broke away from the ANC, this isn’t at all about politics. It’s bigger than that nothingness. In the UK, the noble Birtish Beer and […]

You just wonder how long Rafael Benitez has until the big axe or the curtain closes on his Liverpool managerial career? He has been walking on thin ice this season after losing 5 of their 13 league encounters so far. To his credit Benitez has remained defiant despite all the troubles surrounding him and Liverpool […]

Anyone doubting the enormity of the World Cup should have been swayed by the events of the past few days. The deciding 2010 World Cup qualifier between Algeria and Egypt resulted in riots outside the Algerian embassy in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak vowing in a televised speech that attacks on Egyptians abroad will not […]

I sit in my teacher cubicle throwing crumpled bits of paper over the cubicle wall. On the other side of the wall is a Chinese boy who has been punished for not doing his homework. He is about twelve. I cannot see him. He has to sit there at that desk and finish his work […]

An interesting development, if you follow the touring English cricket team, has been the absence of Jacques Kallis from South Africa’s ODI squad. I wrote a loving hymn (or chunder-worthy appraisal depending on your point of view) about JK last week, focusing on his quest for greatness, present-day anxieties have brought his importance to the […]

Last week I wrote about South Africa’s hate affair with the pedestrian. And judging by some of the comments, there is a lot of hate out there! One chap even said he would go out of his way to knock me down if he saw me on the street. Needless to say I have shaved […]