I really didn’t want to play the “offended Hindu card” and write about Zaprio’s now infamous Sunday Times Cricket South Africa (CSA) cartoon but after numerous debates I’ve taken the plunge … Zapiro’s cartoon depicts Haroon Lorgat, the suspended CSA chief executive, bound to a sacrificial altar and about to be “steeked” by two CSA […]
Media
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Keep calm and let karma find Zapiro
I’ve tried, really, really tried, to get offended by Zapiro’s cartoon, but I just cannot. I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. Even as I stare at a picture of our beloved Hindu god Ganesha, who is mythologised as the son of Shiva and Parvathi, and brother of Muruga, and as I […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
When Uncle Mac gets spun
Oh, the president’s wit. The president’s wit. What is it, about the president’s wit? Let me just try get a few things out the way: Is there something about his lack of delivery that gets us all riled up instead of laughing? Is it timing? Is it that he does not know his audience well […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
“Tik” and transformation: Shooting up the wrong tree?
Co-authored by Kirsten Harris Richard Nixon declared the “war on drugs” in 1971. However it was Reagan who took the “war” to “the streets” by implementing a number of detrimental economic and social policies that further divided America along racial lines. Under Reagan’s leadership, Nancy Reagan implored nice middle-class white kids to “just say no” […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Zuma doesn’t read and other myths
“This is not a pipe,” reads the caption beneath the painting. With only a cursive scribble and signature — “Magritte” — you begin to wonder if this isn’t one of those overdone visual puns. Magritte, the Belgian painter and provocateur is right. This is not a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. One […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Media, News/Politics
Concourt ruling against ‘teen sex’ law protects rape survivors’ rights
Last week’s Constitutional Court ruling decriminalising consensual sexual relationships between teens was met with moralising outrage across the country. Sensationalist media fanned the flames of indignation by failing to contextualise the law’s effect on teen sexual relations – including rape.
Under the impugned sections 15 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) teenage rape survivors, especially girls, run the risk of being criminally charged for being raped.
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Glenn Greenwald vs Newsnight – when did the BBC become the lackeys of the security state?
Something deeply disturbing is going on in Britain, right under the nose of one of the oldest democracies in the world. Watch the video embedded below to see what I mean. For those of you unable to see the video, it’s an interview of Glenn Greenwald by veteran BBC journalist, Kirsty Wark. Her first question […]
Posted inMedia
Cinematic African magic: Cisse’s ‘Yeelen’ at iMPAC short-film festival
In a discussion of African beliefs in magic, Ryszard Kapuscinski (in The Shadow of the Sun, 2002) describes the strange nocturnal behaviour of a group of men, carrying someone on a stretcher on the outskirts of a village where he and his guide were spending the night, dashing furtively from shrub to shrub instead of […]
Posted inBusiness, Health, Media
How is alcohol good for you?
I recently tweeted my views on the proposed ban on alcohol advertising. The ban, which I fully support, would see to it that alcohol no longer makes its regular appearance across multiple media channels. That means no more beer ads during a sports game. No more of those cider ads featuring hip-looking youth traversing the […]
Posted inEquality, Media
Black penis, white penis – a cock-and-bull story
Let’s just get it out there for once and for all. Do black men have bigger penises than white men and is this what all the fuss over the past 350 years has been about? Or is the legend of the oversized black cock nothing more than a construct concocted by white men in order […]
Posted inMedia
Dietmar Brehm’s ‘The Murder Mystery’: Sado-porn or genius noir?
Dietmar Brehm’s The Murder Mystery (1992) is a powerfully disconcerting film of only about 15 minutes’ duration. It has been described as sado-pornographic – a description I do not agree with, except for the “sado-“ prefix, which is accurate if this alludes to the impression created by the fragmentary, disjointed, “noir-ish” images flickering across the […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Micro-marketing: New opiate of the masses
By Rifqah Luzita Naidoo The trends of consumer culture have most certainly evolved since the late 1940s, where critics considered people as being given superficial morals through the mass media. On the one hand technology has brought things closer; we have the world wide web, online shopping and an application for everything under the sun. […]