Research tells us that a disconcertingly large number of Americans fear the Illuminati, the Knights Templar and the Elders of Zion. These gullible souls swallow the air candy of the conspiracy theorists that such evil organisations are plotting global domination, although there’s no evidence that they even exist beyond the imagination of the likes of […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Mandela’s legacy a threat
By Lukhona Mnguni Those of us who are born in July are growingly becoming either miserable or jealous over Madiba. There is hardly a fuss about anyone’s birthday but that of Nelson Mandela’s in July. However, this is not really the main point of protest over this Mandelafication of the month of July. It is […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Nkosazana good for AU, good for SA
As Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma prepared to take over her responsibilities as the new and first female leader of the African Union Commission, the reaction back home was somewhat bitter-sweet. Many said the former foreign affairs minister was being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. They argued SA was losing one of its finest. That she […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How far we’ve fallen
By Rafique Gangat As SA’s first career diplomat of colour, I am pained to learn of what is happening to my beloved country. I took part in the painful struggle for freedom and eventually shared in the joy of liberation and democracy in 1994 and since then worked tirelessly to build the new SA. My […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A Madiba child
By Shireen Mukadam I had a dream. I was lying on the grass of the Boston Commons surrounded by three new friends. A Jordanian-Syrian, studying in Australia. A Catalonian Spaniard working in Colombia. And Marube from Kenya — a 52-year-old, who has aspirations of resuming his law degree, which he commenced at 26 in 1986 […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A parliament that doesn’t respect itself
Dr Mathole Motshekga, ANC chief whip, at the end of June wrote in ANC Today that, “parliament survives on the confidence and respect the public have in it, without (which) its dignity and integrity is eroded”. The context was Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota sticking to his guns that President Jacob Zuma had violated his oath […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
ANC stance on DA school closures hypocritical
In 2007, Angie Motshekga, the then Gauteng MEC for education embarked on an unpopular operation — to close what she called “non-performing schools” in the province. The move angered learners, parents, teachers, unions and even some people in the ANC. Motshekga reasoned that the schools facing closure come January 2008, were schools that were badly […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Free when-it-suits-us Market Foundation
When one finds oneself cheering the combined team of the Tobacco Institute and the Free Market Foundation – the latter with surely about as much credibility in a post-financial meltdown world as the Lenin Institute of Economic Innovation – one must perhaps pause and head for a neurological examination. Certainly it was disconcerting to be […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Nailing TB
By Hoosen Coovadia We shouldn’t be surprised by recent news that 12% of hospital staff at the largest, government-funded tuberculosis hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal are themselves infected with tuberculosis. The public in South Africa will remember media reports of the tragic consequences of the acquisition of TB by health staff working in health-facility environments where the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Dear Jonathan ‘Balls of Steel’ Shapiro
By Lukhona Mnguni I by no means wish to call you balls, even though many out there wish to call you such. Just that one of the Mail & Guardian journalists felt it appropriate to say you have “balls of steel” upon seeing the cartoon that got tongues wagging. You did after all unambiguously call […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Keeping Africa’s growth up, poverty down
These are uncertain times for the global economy. The recovery in the US remains sluggish, the debt crisis in Europe is unresolved and more alarmingly, there are signs of a slower growth in China. The global economic crisis, which started in 2007, has not spared the African continent. According to the 2012 African Economic Outlook […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Can South Sudan learn from the Alaska Model?
South Sudan will be celebrating the first anniversary of its independence on July 9. But the day’s revelry will be marred by the fact that the past year has brought none of the peace and prosperity that people hoped it would. With a poverty incidence of 90 percent, literacy rates as low as 24 percent, […]