General

Question time before the blog: have you commuted in an SA “township taxi”? Would you/do you consider it to be your normal transport to and from work? Good grief, no fricken waaayy, I thought to myself after reading Sarah Britten’s article on buying a BMWobble your cash flow (as in wobble your cash flow) now […]

Stephen Jones is a Welsh journalist who has been the rugby union correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times for more than 20 years. He was twice named sports correspondent of the year by the Sports Journalists’ Association. He is noted for his controversial and often provocative views, in particular his anti-Irish and anti-New […]

The other morning I was sitting on the loo in our apartment on the 22nd floor in downtown Shanghai, cursing a decadent evening of German eisbein, sausages, sauerkraut and Long Island iced teas. I heard a shifting noise and looked at the window. A Chinese gentleman was peering at me through a crack in the […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Is Helen Zille justified in appointing a pale male Western Cape cabinet?

The non-profit sector (NPO) in South Africa has a long and proud history of serving a disparate number of communities. These have ranged from traditionally charitable institutions, such as homes for children and the aged, to socio-political and economic non-governmental organisations (NGO). The wide array and large number of NPOs — estimates put the number […]

It has been four months since my last post. Having just closed out the past semester – by far the most difficult of my short academic career – I am slowly re-emerging and connecting with current affairs and the social world around me. My students, those I taught this past semester and over the past […]

I thought I had made a good point. I was talking to the scriptwriter of a television series interviewing me on the topic of raising emotionally intelligent children. My point was that the by-line of each episode was (more or less) “remember, you are great mommies”. I think it’s great to support parents by taking […]

I have had a few cathartic experiences living in this beautiful country of ours. One of them was in 1989 sitting in a room full of fellow students debating issues which to us at the time were very important for our organization, AIESEC. We were gathered from twenty or so campuses around the country in a meeting room at Wits. At a point I looked around the room and realized that everything I had learned about race until that point was a lie.

1. He remembers drowsing on a large woman’s back in a blanket as she walked. She was talking very loudly to other women. He was often on her back, warm, safe, but not his mother’s back. 2. Drinking Coke on a beach in Durban, often hearing the words Umhlanga Rocks, Amanzimtoti like the tree-sounds outside […]

In my last post I wrote about Plato’s account of love in his Symposium. But different thinkers have had very diverse conceptions of this phenomenon — and I deliberately do not say “feeling”, because, although love is usually accompanied by certain, fairly intense feelings that people generally locate in their chest or breast area (hence […]

Right, confession time. I haven’t blogged for a while because I have been too busy. Moving countries and starting a new job tends to have that effect. Yes, I am back in Joburg and yes, I am one of the returning expats the Sunday Times wrote about with such undisguised schadenfreude earlier this year. Don’t […]

Very often, in my experience, it is quite difficult to comment on sports and race issues without appearing to be offensive or over-generalising. It is indeed disheartening when one gets the impression that the black and white people of this country seem to “prefer” to live in different sporting worlds, with a few liberals sprinkled […]