General

Dear Chris, It was so good to hear from you again, although it would be nice to hear from you when things are going well — not just a prayer when you have gone and made a mess of things. Again. Yes, I’ve been watching developments in South Africa for the past several years. I’ve […]

The Thought Leader editorial team invited me (all the contributors, but I like to say “me” because it makes me feel all commissioned and all that) to write on the year ahead’s predictions or to review the past year, all related to my area of expertise. I think we can all agree that The Sumo’s […]

Feeling purposeful and in tune so that waking up every morning feels like a new possibility. Working hard — but not so hard that the rest of life collapses into work. Being productive. An hour can be an effective chunk of time when you’re focused. Working on things that you love. (Is it possible to […]

Mr Vincent Maher: Sir, this letter is my response to your blog entitled “Thought Leader and racial/ gender representation“. The first trick in the book (as far as I understand) is that you’ve got to have something to say, and that I personally believe is what you’ve been overlooking when you ask: “Do you perceive […]

Someone please tell me what is “so cool” about having an American or British flag in your car dangling from your rear-view mirror day in, day out? No, I have nothing against those two former great powers. I think some people need help knowing who they are. Why are you wearing another country’s flag as […]

Every time I write about privacy and security on the internet I get a whole bunch of people who accuse me of paranoia. They maintain I am looking for conspiracy theories — if you have nothing to hide, then why worry who is following you on the internet? Besides which, I’ve been told, as consumers […]

When I looked at the wide variety of responses to Vincent Maher’s posting on the state of Thought Leader — in response to Dominic Tweedie’s criticisms of it on the Debate list serve last week — I decided that it would be best to write a piece that responds directly to his criticisms. This was […]

Having just been kakked out by Chris Marais, one of the greatest writers/photographers South Africa has ever produced, for being a depressing scaremonger, the time is ripe to blog things right. But lest julle almal think Mr Hyde has just turned into Dr Jekyll, or the lion has found his courage, or the tin man […]

Before we launched Thought Leader, its management team got together to discuss the invitation process. All three of us would have been classified as “white” by the National Party government and, indeed, we have benefited from the fact our parents were white through our access to education during the transition phase from apartheid to our […]

Spare a thought for the family of Andrew Olmsted. You may not know him, or even have heard of him, but you’re about to. This is what was posted on his blog site over the weekend: “This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we […]

This letter, I’m afraid, is something of a kiss and tell, and I would imagine, for adults only. It’s about when my ex-girlfriend and I briefly infiltrated Jo’burg’s swinging community. “Swinging” is described as “lively, exciting, and fashionable” … and “sexually liberated” in my Compact Oxford English Dictionary, but what it really comes down to […]

Towards the end of 1999, Time magazine published a special edition that looked ahead to the new millennium. Among others, it contained an article that summarised the projections of a variety of thinkers, writers and scientists approached by Time for their considered prognoses and expectations concerning the new millennium.