General

One of the biggest bugbears of South African sports fans has been the issue of forced quotas being introduced into team selections. Fourteen years after our becoming a fully fledged multiracial democracy, the next generation of sportsmen and women are available for selection on merit to our club and national sides. If we allow politicians […]

The South African Rugby Legends Association has been running a number of projects designed primarily to uplift the disadvantaged people of South Africa. As a result, literally tens of thousands of children have been through Sarla clinics conducted by rugby legends who have given freely of their time. In this way we have been able […]

“Thouth Afwica ith a 10-out-of-10 wugby-pwaying countwy tho we know we are in for a weally tough Test. Goth, I’m in thuch awe of them; they’th the world championths.” If New Zealand coach Graham Henry thinks we’re buying that crock of crap, best he thinks again. If there is anyone on the planet right now […]

Submitted by Michael Francis There is much furore and debate about current street name changes in Durban. I see it as a missed opportunity for reconciliation as it is merely an exercise in petty politics by a group of ideologues. South Africa is a society in transition. A large part of transformation is symbolic and […]

It seems like everyone is practising a little search-engine optimisation (SEO) these days. While you might have the basics covered, do you know where SEO is heading? I’ve been optimising websites for search engines since the late 1990s and this has given me the fortunate opportunity to witness the evolution of search-engine algorithms over the […]

Drop your greeting and message to the Springbok team and Peter de Villiers in the message box below. I will forward all messages on to De Villiers in New Zealand, so that he can print these and post them on the wall in the Springbok war room — their hotel team room in which they […]

We have been riding this roller-coaster train since South Africa’s announcement as the host of the 2010 World Cup finals. It seems, however, that as the “rainbow nation”, we are yet to agree on whether we would like to see this beautiful country of ours deliver the showpiece to the world. Though one concurs that […]

After Mandela’s guided tour to the mike was concluded by Graca I found it increasingly tough to fight off deep embarrassment at the idolatry placed on the man, and at the happy, feel-good faces of a crowd of suburbanites totally immersed in the idea of their own charity.

Einstein once said the definition of lunacy is to repeat the same actions while expecting the results to change. This came to mind as I was reading opinion pieces in print media and online about how Peter de Villiers should go for outright brawn against the Kiwis in the Tri-Nations Tests, something about bullying them […]

Are we so spoiled by our SuperSport television producers creating, such a fantastic and scintillating rugby inventory and TV package, each week, from 18 cameras on site, for us at home, or in a club, or local watering hole, that we start to avoid watching live games at the stadium? Of course the price of […]

I was in the hotel lobby waiting for my room to be ready and madly typing on my computer when a wide-eyed woman peeped around the corner, looked expectantly at me and smiled. I smiled back, and the penny dropped when I overheard her talking about her excitement for the Global Voices Summit that I […]

Submitted by Anthea Garman As a result of chairing 10 Winter School talks (at this point) I’ve started to feel a growing a sense of urgency about being a South African, a citizen and a member of a civil society in need of revival. Just to give you a sense of what’s being said at […]