As entertaining as the Bar One Man rescuing a keg of beer from a burning building may be, it suffers the same fate as anything produced by the WWE wrestling crowd, everyone knows it’s rigged. Now the brand is putting together a reality television show with “tough physical and mental challenges”. Instead, and in order […]
General
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Nothing Holi about We Are One festival
On Saturday April 6 the Joburg leg of the Holi One We Are One festival took place at Emmarentia Dam where people congregated to throw colour into the air and at each other to celebrate the fact that “we are all one”. There were no VIP tickets sold but one did have to purchase bags […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
How the largest movement in history is restoring justice to the world
Paul Hawken, writer of Blessed Unrest — How the largest movement in the world came into being and why no one saw it coming (Penguin 2007), is an indefatigable speaker and champion for environmental justice, who gave more than a thousand talks on the environment in the course of 15 years, before writing the book. […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
Alcohol in Australia: Some observations
So we’re facing the prospect of something that the advertising industry has been fighting for years: the banning of alcohol advertising. Having just visited one of the great nanny states, Australia, I thought it would be interesting to share some observations of how alcohol issues are handled there. The fact that I was able to […]
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Michel Houellebecq and the dialectics of nihilism
Michel Houellebecq’s monumental novel, Atomised, is one of the most honest, brutal and haunting books of the 21st century when it comes to a consideration of the destructive dialectics of society. Through the main characters, Bruno and Michel, Houellebecq makes his argument that humanity today has arrived at the edge of the abyss, that there […]
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Expose the lesbians
By Gcobani Qambela In the past years we have been reading with horror reports of not only extreme homophobia but also often the violent attacks that are levelled against homosexuals in Africa. From reading about men being named and shamed in public newspapers in Uganda, to the horrific “corrective rapes” of lesbians in our very […]
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Ubuntu in western society
By Melo Magolego Black South Africans have a penchant for waxing lyrical about botho/ubuntu. It is an ideology which, much like Pratley Putty, we seek to export worldwide. An ideology to which we claim intellectual property and boldly assert is inextricably linked to our being Africans. But is this thing really that unique? Or do […]
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City Power speaking in tongues
With the Easter and Passover holy days a thing of the past I was wondering, get the editor a Valium, whether we, as South Africans, aren’t missing out on a trick — religious tourism. Don’t snigger, if anyone knows about history and religion it’s me, everything my wife serves has a best before the Big […]
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Commuter classism
By Brendon Bosworth I prefer riding the train to driving my car. It’s cheaper, and it forces me into a very public atmosphere, removing the sense of separation I get when sitting alone in the traffic, partitioned from other motorists. A busy train ride is a lesson in sharing space: people knock against each other, […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Pope of the poor?
Many have welcomed the election of a non-European cardinal as a Roman Catholic pope. Prior to the election of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, there seemed to be general consensus that a pope from either Latin America or Africa would be a welcome break with the dominance of Europeans over the leadership […]
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Ben Ngubane and Piekniek by Dingaan
Ben Ngubane – till recently the chairperson of the perpetually dysfunctional SABC board – was appointed as the first minister of arts, culture, science and technology after the historic 1994 elections. It was a euphoric time for the arts sector. The right to freedom of creative expression was guaranteed in the interim Constitution. Apartheid’s censorship […]
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Painting, equality and the ‘aesthetic regime of art’
There is a painting by Degas in the Philadelphia Art Museum that illustrates well what Jacques Ranciére means by the “aesthetic regime of art” (one of three “regimes”, the other two of which — the “ethical regime of images” and the “representative regime of art” — preceded the “aesthetic regime” historically). It shows a man […]