Thought Leader

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…

By the term, ‘criminality’, I don’t simply mean the perpetration of crime, or criminal acts; I have in mind something far more fundamental, even primal, in the sense of that which remains behind when criminologists, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists have exhausted all avenues of causal explanation when it comes to the ‘grounds’ or causal antecedents…

I feel sorry for the ANC, to have an MEC for education in Gauteng who displays his ignorance of what a language is, fundamentally, for all and sundry to see. As has been widely reported, he has opined that the establishment of a Solidarity and community-funded Afrikaans-medium university would “perpetuate racist agendas”, and would be…

Cutting off communication has become a favourite ploy of some of the continent’s Big Men. Ironically, this harms their standing in the long term Although the Berlin Wall was toppled 30 years ago, new walls have continued to crop up around the world — virtual ones that block or limit internet access to avert political…