General

In exactly 273 days from now the world will be descending on South Africa for the 2010 soccer World Cup while some of the world’s best soccer talent will be feeling a little disgruntled in front of their top-of-the-range HDTV televisions where they’ll be watching it from home and harbour grievances at what could have […]

By Percy Mabandu The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) by dissolving would be as good for our identity discourse as its merger with the ANC is bad for South Africa’s body politic. At first breath the party and its excesses, by dissolving, will make space for more progressive thinking about other ways of being black in […]

From the mid 1970s to the end of the 1980s the world was still in a Cold War, the final embers of the Vietnam War were extinguished (but not forgotten), apartheid was still in force and the Berlin Wall was still very much a barrier to entry. But within this seemingly politicised gloom, several individuals […]

By Siza Ngxabi The conference of the Community of Mandel Rhodes Scholars (CMRS) has seen an amazing turn-out from the distinguished guests in the past two days who made their own presentations and dialogues on ethical leadership, the likes of Kojo Parris and others, to scholars sharing their own research projects and other initiatives they […]

“That will be 200 dollars New Zealand sir,” said the airport official at Auckland International airport, New Zealand. “Two hundred dollars for this naartjie, I mean orange, mandarin, whatever?” “Yes sir.” My wife burst into tears. I wanted to hit the smirking youngster in front of me. Let’s back up a bit. After Llewellyn Kriel’s […]

The world is awesome. There are a million cool things to every bad thing. Like this giant rat they found in Papua New Guinea. It is 82cm long. It’s way bigger than a cat and most dogs for that matter. And it looks like a complete mate. It just sits there and lets the TV […]

Based on a true story. A young girl called Melissa stared at the house across the road. She knew her friend Melody lived there and they often played together. She preferred going there instead of her own home for reasons which would take many years to understand. Her home was a sad place and her […]

Vodacom launched the iPhone 3GS about a month ago on 28 July, but unfortunately stock was very limited — in fact, there is still a major shortage of the 3GS in South Africa. (you can read about my mission to get one here, and a bit of well-deserved praise for iStore here). To the untrained […]

When Brandon Huntley is finally deported we should give him a Caster Semenya-size welcome at the airport. Hopefully with as many blacks as there were when Caster got her hero’s welcome. But I want a T-shirt that reads “Mug you later whitey” just for laughs. He must not be given the satisfaction of getting the […]

I am not an ardent follower or scholar of Steve Bantu Biko who died this week back in 1977 at the hands of the brutal South African security police. But I venture to ask … what would he feel, what would he do in present day South Africa were he alive? Many people dare say […]

Yes the Boks shouldn’t have lost on Saturday. Yes they performed poorly. Yes they let Australia off the hook with some poor decisions after great work in midfield. Yes they didn’t bring their usual fiery intensity to the match. But no, this is not the end of the world. In fact, it may well be […]

So Sepp Blatter and company have finally decided to stop worrying about crime statistics in South Africa and do their job as governors of the game. About time, too. Last week’s bolt from the blue may have left Chelsea feeling well, slightly blue, but it was a long overdue stamping out of one of football’s […]