General

Someone told me the other day that we live in a society of illiterates, that kids don’t read any more and that the quality of our interaction with words is declining because of TV and tabloid newspapers. All I could say in response was: “Huh?” It’s so easy to talk about corruption of journalism and […]

I’m suffering from a severe case of Manto exhaustion over here. Seldom has the media circus managed to get under my skin as much as those professional mudslingers over at the Times have been able to in recent times. For a writer, this is a horrible situation. My creativity is being jeopardised. I’ve got a […]

Render what is partially Caeser’s unto Caeser, albeit that he never actually met a force multiplier. A few weeks ago Sky News took an in-depth look at Zimbabweans crossing the South African border. Once across, these poor refugees were confronted by three farmers who, in one case, chased them on foot and threw stones at […]

A hot topic of debate on the first day of the Africa Media Leadership Conference in Cape Town yesterday was the role the SABC plays in the pan-African media space and whether its African expansion project amounts to neo-imperialism. Ironically, the matter was brought to the fore by Phil Molefe, the head of SABC’s international […]

Does Facebook play a part in politics (governmental, not corporate :-)? Of course! The Sunday Times in South Africa released a front page report yesterday on the South African Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Over and above the fact that Manto is 66 years old and should probably retire anyway, there are calls from almost every […]

“Religion comes from the period of human history where nobody, not even the mighty Democritus, who concluded that all matter was made from atoms, had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our own inescapable demand for […]

The e-mail leered at me. “C’mon – are you man enough?” it seemed to ask. It arrived in my inbox, together with twelve inducements to sign up for websites liberally sprinkled with the words boobs, bouncing, hot, teen and nymph. Also there were the usual suggestions that if I wanted to be a real man […]

Memo from the Acting Director, Central Intelligence Agency, John E. McLaughlin, Langley, Virginia to President George W Bush Circa 2004 TO: THE GREAT LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD People, on the one hand, are paranoid about privacy. They jump up and down every time there’s any kind of new legislation to monitor or track them. […]

There is something about Assassin’s Creed, the up-coming game from Ubisoft that has me salivating, shaking and smiling a toothless grin all at the same time, even though I only drool at night and I do actually have teeth. Not only has the Middle East been politically volatile for the past couple of thousand years, […]

‘Well, the story goes that a giraffe came upon a monkey perched high up in a tree, watching a sleeping lioness on the ground. “What are you up to?” asks the giraffe.“Well, if you must know, I’m waiting for that lioness to wake up so I can hump her brains out.”