General

Most of us who still have command of our diminishing cognitive faculties will recall that fateful day in 1972 during the summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when armed thugs belonging to a Palestinian militant group, Black September, descended upon the Olympic village that housed the Israeli team and held them hostage. This band of […]

By Jennifer Thorpe I am white and I am afraid. I am not afraid because I am white. I am not afraid because others are black or Indian or coloured. I am afraid because I am the survivor of crime in South Africa. I am afraid because I anticipate that I will have to survive […]

We were the country that fought against all odds, that stood up to perpetrators of human rights though it meant lives and futures were lost. We were the freedom fighters, the reconcilers, and set ourselves as an example for revolutionaries the world over. But fifteen years after our democracy was born, we are a split […]

With the US Open having kicked off over the weekend, pundits everywhere are making predictions about the outcome of the US Open and I’m making my own. The defending singles champion is Roger Federer for the men and Serena Williams for the women. Federer has so far shown he is at home at the USTA […]

Deserts are an ever-changing landscape. From one day to the next the dunes shift from place to place, rolling over the landscape made asunder with the assistance of the wind. The only constant is the sun and as an Arabic proverb states “all sunshine makes a desert”. Cricket’s great desert over the last decade and […]

Rugby in the Southern Hemisphere, especially in the SANZAR countries is principally driven by the capital infusion from Newscorp who buy the broadcast rights from SANZAR for the Super Rugby Super 14 series, Tri Nations and British & Irish Lions Tours. These rights are then syndicated out to countries around the world so Newscorp recoups […]

There are those sick of hearing that colonisation made Africa a cuckoo’s nest and every new African leader a dark shade of Jack Nicholson. There are those equally tired of hearing a non-white person cry wolf (racism) every time he/she is treated with disdain at work, at the mall or during sex. People treat each […]

On August 28 Apple finally released the latest version of its Mac OS X called Snow Leopard. Though it is a new version, the changes are very subtle, but those little things add up to a highly revamped Mac experience. And though the traditional Apple fan boy/journalism bigshots like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue got […]

I have seen plenty of own goals before, some crazier than others, but Abou Diaby’s nonchalant header into the top corner almost takes the cake. Sadly, it was the death nail in an otherwise fantastic fight from Arsenal. I cannot imagine what went through his mind — if anything at all. Heck, he is not […]

A world-renowned scholar of public policy, Yehezkel Dror, recently reemphasised the point that policy and politics “closely interact, often overlap, and in part cannot be separated even analytically”. This seemingly obvious point, with far-reaching implications, has also been made by various eminent scholars. On poverty, Martin Ravallion — a leading scholar on issues of poverty […]

It is a well-recognised fact that a volunteer army, like the United States, should be far more effective than a conscript one simply because the former is made up of career professionals capable of learning about sophisticated weaponry and tactics through years of service while the latter consists primarily of school leavers and other youngsters […]

This blog is a recount of an almost typical day of dealing with the women in my life. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate … My Chinese god-daughter Sunshine meets me at the tacky old bus station I remember so well from my stay in Shaoxing […]