General

I was delighted to read a Sunday Times article containing extracts of the speeches made by Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool at the “Sharing Ideas for the Future public forum”. There is no doubting their sincerity in calling on Jews and Muslims to rejoice in their own identity, while seeking […]

Violence and crime are ubiquitous in South Africa today. Nevertheless, few of the many discussion programmes or media commentaries succeed in providing an illuminating perspective on it. By contrast, Johann Rossouw’s use of the three structuring societal spheres — the religious, political and economic — that occupy different positions of dominance and subordination in different […]

Check out Robert’s post on Christian fundamentalists getting their SMS fingers twitching over The Golden Compass. Yeeeeeesh! Nice little comment thread developing. I’ve just found these two YouTube videos. Every side needs its propaganda :) “Atheists Are Fools” and “We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot”. The second one is an amateur reworking of a […]

Knut, the baby polar bear, turned one year old yesterday and the Germans continue to make trillions selling photos, keyrings and any kind of merchandise you can think of. We’re Africa, FFS! We do animals … that’s our thing — that’s how we lure tourists down here for death and redistribution! What is the Johannesburg […]

Thinking about upcoming party leadership elections, presidential elections, ward and provincial elections, committee elections and, for that matter, any other elections — be they to the congregation’s koeksister committee, to the security complex’s trustee committee or to the local youth body — leaves me cold. How is it that so much emphasis is placed on […]

The neoliberal economic option, in conjunction with a liberal-democratic political practice, appears to have been the direction in which the ANC government under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki has been going for some time. In my own view, this is probably the reason why, judging by the nominations of candidates for leadership positions within the […]

How do you choose a name for a new company? There might be many rules in that book, but I will tell you rule number one: no matter what the new company will do, make sure its .com domain name is available. If the .com name is not available, and you are absolutely, definitely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt […]

I have been asked to write nothing but my truth, as I know it, to promote the right to freedom of expression. I guess I have been invited by destiny and history to break the silence. You see, since 1994, far too many have chosen silence. The silence was not imposed by the Madiba magic. […]

I am blown away! Just when you think no one cares about some over-the-hill pale male hack who had his arse kicked for venting his frustration in cyberspace, you find out people care. A lot of people care a helluva lot. My inbox quite literally reeled under the load of messages of support after last […]

Would you like to see, or should others be allowed to watch, full-colour, full-motion video of children having sex with each other, with adults or with animals? Until recently, this would have been an easy question to answer. But in an age where we can produce near-perfect digital versions of real-life events, without the slightest […]

Did you hear about the case of indecent assault opened against dancer, choreographer, singer and actor Somizi Mhlongo? This is the type of story with “Silwane Files material” written all over it. The article reports that Somizi’s accuser approached him to ask for an autograph and Somizi “played” with the accuser’s private parts during this […]

I write this just a short while after finding out about the tragic death of a family member. The elderly member, grandfather of a few, loved by many, was tragically shot and killed in his home in the early hours of the evening on October 31. He was a soft and warm man, always with […]