General

Ever alive with improbabilities, South Africa is exploding with anthems. Not content with lyrical pleas to the ghost of De la Rey to return from Benoni and free the boere from the yoke of demockracy, anthems are cropping up everywhere. And, ironically, most seem inspired by the shambolic state of the nation. As cricket commentator […]

“Accountability”, for the benefit of Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and others, is the acceptance of responsibility for your actions and decisions — in this case, the national electricity disaster. It is a debacle that dwarfs all other problems facing this country and impacts directly or indirectly on the lives of every South African. Opposition […]

The power failures have given the prophets of doom hope for the country; hope that it’s all downhill from now. Finally our prophecies are coming true, they whisper in their hearts.

Just over 14 years ago, at 5am on Monday January 17 1994, my mother was rudely woken by loud banging on the door of her tiny one-bedroom flat. She got out of bed, opened the door and was shoved aside as four policemen with R1 rifles stormed in and ransacked her home without giving her […]

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed during the writing of this blog. Also, the author of this blog has no beef (no pun) with scientists or bunny huggers. In fact, some of his best friends are bunny-hugging scientists. Did you see the story about the weird rodents that scientists have discovered that are immune to pain? […]

These blacks. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. But mostly, I’m actually just tired of whites always being called racists just because we point out that things are screwed and the country is going down the toilet. We’re going to end up like Zimbabwe. And so what if Helen Zille or Tony Leon are white? […]

It’s hard not to feel a little bashed around on Thought Leader these days. Bashed by black guys calling white guys racist, white guys calling white guys racist and every now and then just being blind-sided for daring to ask people not to be cruel to animals. When you can twist cruelty to animals in […]

There were two stories during the past week that made me ponder human nature. The first one was the story about seven young people living in a small Welsh community who took their own lives over a period of about a year. These young people, aged in their teens and 20s, committed suicide and it […]

This poem is based on a true-life experience I had while visiting Mombasa, Kenya. It will always stand out for me as an exceptionally powerful lesson in how to view myself and my efforts in the world, and to realise that the only way I can ever help anyone else is if I understand what […]

This is the world we live in. Personal freedoms are squashed whether by governments or religious fervour. Remember those ubiquitous CCTV cameras in the UK. The work place is structured and controlled to ensure that individual creative thinking is reduced to a minimum. Education produces drones and is focused on ensuring that the drones find […]

With virtually all my colleagues shaking in their boots, so to speak, in the face of an impending double audit at our university this year — one internal, in preparation for the other, external one, later in the year — and my own instinctive as well as not-so-instinctive (philosophically informed) response being one of immediate […]

There is nothing wishy-washy about my support for anything sporting. When I follow rugby, cricket or soccer I watch it on my own — I can’t stand the thought of having some doos, who thinks he’s a maven on sport, sprouting crap at me while I’m trying to concentrate. The fact that I swear like […]