General

I had the opportunity recently to have a text exchange (read: questions by email — the interview style of the time-pressed blogger) with Jake Larsen, head of the Nokia Music Store (Middle East and Africa). I was interested in how the Music Store has been doing post launch as it always takes a while for […]

I love beer … a lot. Most of my life revolves around the stuff. I have formed and broken friendships and relationships based on whether they would have a positive or negative impact on my beer consumption and its frequency. I work hard at my job, I don’t allow much to phase me, even blatant […]

Sometime in 2008, a Muslim woman clad in a hijaab (head scarf) was verbally abused in the East German city of Dresden by a German-Russian named Axel W who called her an Islamist, a slut, a terrorist and some other politically erroneous nonsense. Marwa el-Sherbini, an Egyptian national who was married and working in Germany, […]

I don’t know if many of you lot have noticed but there is a worrying trend that is starting to develop every time an issue crops up that grabs national attention — individuals or groups getting behind those who share their race rather than their ideas. This South Africans is your non-starter for ten. Though […]

By Lionel Faull September 6 was the day Grahamstown welcomed 40 young leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa and prominent members of the South African and Grahamstown civil society to engage one another for three days on the practice of ethical leadership — a gathering that could grow in time to become Africa’s premier conference of […]

Outcomes-based education (OBE) has not worked in South Africa. For someone of the stature of Mamphela Ramphele to say this openly and courageously is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifling atmosphere of lip-service being paid to the ANC-government’s ill-starred, bureaucracy-blighted policy by many educators who admit privately that teachers are despondent and […]

While any death should be seen as a tragedy I am finding the media panic surrounding the swine flu to be maddening. Right now the swine flu appears to have a kill rate that is less than the normal flu. The threat of it mutating into a mass-killing strain is the same threat of the […]

South Africa continues to be one of the most polarised nations on earth with race still being one of the most contentious issues. Brandon Huntley’s story merely points this out once again. The ruling party and indeed many people in the country still use apartheid-era categorisations. Instead of fighting for a non-racial South Africa far […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Is Judge Nkola Motata — convicted this week of drunken driving — fit to judge?

Right, time to don the green-tinted “everything keeps going right” Bok shades again. The Tri-Nations title is all but in our grasp and having donnered all three shades of black, gold and red out of the toughest competition in the world, no-one can dispute our claim to be the world’s best team. But, and here’s […]

Is their success at luring talent and the financial success of the English Premier League turning English clubs into victims? Fifa recently gave Chelsea a 12-month ban on any transfer activity for “tapping” or inducing Gael Kakuta from French club Lens in 2007. The charge says Chelsea induced the youngster to break his contract with […]

Nearly a quarter of a century ago I was at Rhodes University and included Afrikaans 1 among my subject choices. I will always remember the Afrikaans lecturers who insisted on referring to any Xhosa or Zulu-speaking female student as “that beautiful black woman with her impeccable Afrikaans” or that “wonderful black lady who got a […]