General

By Prof Dennis Brutus When conditions are so unseemly even the blind are made aghast and police are firing rubber bullets* in defense of the indefensible it is time Messers Makgoba and Mandela and others of your ilk to reassess your gains and efforts – more importantly, reassess your measuring rods, question your values Respectfully […]

Now that the brouhaha over the South African Music Awards (Sama) at the Sun City Superbowl has died down, we can say that they were a waste of time. In fact, songstress Lira, who was presented with four major awards — including Album of the Year — should have rejected them. But that would be […]

Submitted by Brendan McNulty Since two people I know are now professional iPhone developers, I’ve taken a bit of a closer look at the App Store, the iPhone and marketing of applications. There are a few things I find interesting: 1) It’s essentially a walled garden, distribution is exclusively through the App Store, so Apple […]

African football is entering a critical period — one that will determine whether the decision to host the World Cup on African soil for the first time was the correct one. Firstly, final preparations are now under way for the Confederations Cup, a tournament that will see hosts South Africa thrown into the deep-end with […]

And so, it boils down to this. Despite Chelsea’s vehement protests, despite the evidence and despite their defiance, really, the final of the biggest club competition will be between the champions and the entertainers. Barcelona somehow didn’t make Petr Cech make a save for all of 90 minutes on Wednesday night. But when they did […]

Count them. From David Warner, Graham Napier and Yusuf Pathan, right down to our own Albie Morkel and Tyrone Henderson. What do they have in common? Instant stardom on the back of the ability to hit a long ball, and not always in the prettiest way possible. Certainly not pretty in the manner of a […]

A brand new 24-team British & Irish Cup will take place next year. Twelve teams from the English Championship, six from the Welsh Principality Premiership, Irish provinces Munster, Leinster and Ulster and three Scottish sides will compete for the inaugural trophy. The teams will be divided into four pools of six, playing over five weekends […]

Twitter is a microblogging platform that has recently grown at an incredible pace, with more than 10 million current users. It is one of those ideas that are hard to understand for someone who has not used it before (that someone can be anyone). What recently started to happen is that celebrities are pouncing at it […]

The advent of the Jacob Zuma presidency marks an important turning point in the meaning of freedom and democracy in South Africa. Whatever the know-all political experts and analysts may say, it will be the most important five years in the history of the liberation struggle, especially the ANC. This period will be characterised by […]

What is evil? My favourite definition is that a person is evil if they cannot tell wrong from right, bad from good. As an extreme example, a man buys an apple and takes out a knife to peel it. He slits a child’s throat to check if the knife is sharp enough then proceeds to […]

When the Special Browse Mole Report (the report) was initially leaked to Cosatu, those implicated in clandestine activities to undermine the rule of law and overthrow the government swiftly moved to discredit the origins of the report and attempted to render its contents invalid. The SACP secretary-general, Blade Nzimande, addressed a letter of complaint to […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Dear President Zuma … What do you expect from his presidency?