Thought Leader

By Mamakiri Mulaudzi, Ebenneza Kofi Okyere-D, Peace Kiguwa, Janan J. Dietrich You know how it can be super awkward to chat to someone about sex related things? Well the team at the PHRU (Perinatal HIV Research Unit) at Wits University has fixed that. Imagine that you are 22-years-old and living in Soweto. Your parents probably don’t…

This is what happens to you after you quit Twitter

I do not have any reason to Twitter I joined just to follow Helen Zille I thought we’d have great adventures Propounding Liberalism’s virtues Then the haters and the hatred could Be defeated with rational looks At arguments and mindful logic applied To unwind, untangle and internalize The great social problems of the day The…

The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or…

On the way back from a conference in Berlin just before Christmas 2019, I was catching up on movies on Qatar Airlines — a carrier with exceptional leg-space in economy class, so I could sit comfortably, at least — and I managed to select a number of excellent recent films, including Marc Webb’s Gifted (2017)…

Everybody knows the story of the emperor’s new clothes — where a vain emperor contracted two so-called ‘tailors’ to make him a new set of clothes, not knowing that they were con artists. By flattering the emperor about his handsome appearance in the supposedly new clothes, when in fact there was nothing, and assuring him…

When one finds oneself on a busy street in modern Berlin — capital of a reunified Germany since June 20 1991 — it is difficult to believe that it has grown into this city in the course of seven centuries, at least as far as its written history goes. The latter records that in the…

Two days ago, November 9 2019, marked 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the irony has not escaped some people, that today one witnesses walls going up again everywhere. Nick Miller, in the Sydney Morning Herald (November 2 2019), for example, writes: Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, pulling the…

The Chairwoman Federal Council and Federal Executive Democratic Alliance DA Federal Head Office Website: da.org.za E-Mail: [email protected] Telephone: +27 (0) 21 465 1431 Theba Hosken House 16 Mill Street Gardens Cape Town Democratic Alliance Federal Head Office P.O. Box 1475 Cape Town 8000 Dear Ma’am My best wishes and congratulations to your good-self, on the…

Recently, I decided that I wanted to hold a conference to define a new vision for South Africa. The premise being that the old vision for South Africa, which was defined between 1987 and 1996, has in fact failed. I intended to invite every political party registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (and you can…