The infantalisation of South African adults proceeds apace. The nanny state has already decreed how much exposure – precisely none – we are to be allowed to character sapping tobacco and booze advertising. Now it is the turn of Cape Town, which revels in its casting as the ‘mother’ city, to embrace the heavy-handed exercise […]
News/Politics
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The trouble with international justice
This month marks 10 years since the International Criminal Court first opened its doors at The Hague in Netherlands. The court was created under the Rome Statute to prosecute serious international crimes like war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has 121 member nations, with Guatemala being the latest. With a decade gone since the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Boats, goats and sleepless nights…letter to JZ
Dear President Zuma I’m sure you have absolutely no idea how thrilled I was this morning to read Sipho Khumalo’s report in The Mercury on your keynote address at the Richards Bay Jobs Summit and Jobs Fair yesterday. He says you “lashed the KZN business community for its lack of innovation and creativity in embracing […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
ANC spaza xenophobia
I took a taxi a few days ago and listened to a conversation between two women and the taxi driver. They were talking about the mushrooming of foreign business owners in the township. The taxi was driving into Alexandra, which has seen an increase in Pakistani and Somali businesses recently. Almost every corner house has […]
Posted inNews/Politics
ANC policy conference ignores the burning issue of the day
The African National Congress’ policy conference kicked off in Johannesburg this week. Its intellectual equivalent of mud wrestling was over a truckload of documents analysing party organisational renewal, nationalisation, job creation, investment and land redistribution. There was also President Jacob Zuma’s catchily titled but ponderously composed Second Transition centrepiece of policy proposals, which is his […]
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Of Marxist wastelands and aborted transitions
On the occasion of the African National Congress’s 100th anniversary early this year, there was a literary text that kept playing inside my subconscious mind every time I watched or read about this momentous event – one of the most significant of our time. It is a passage from Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah: […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Wage subsidy: Cosatu doesn’t care about the youth
A drive on a weekday morning around the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg will reveal to you the real face of unemployment in South Africa. On the corners of the many avenues in this sprawling township where I grew up, young men and women roam the streets. Some play dice and morabaraba and some are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
South Africa’s democratic project: Managing the battles within
By Thapelo Tselapedi It is interesting to note that SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande, in contrast to Kgalema Motlanthe, has spoken rather favourably about the concept of a second transition. In an interview with Mandy Rossouw from City Press, Nzimande made the ‘revelation’ that “the deepening of our democracy cannot be taken any further if we […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Global population dynamics and its implications for sustainable development
In 2011 the planet’s population exceeded the threshold of 7-billion people. Based on data from the most recent United Nations (UN) population projections, the world’s population will swell to over 9-billion by the year 2050. As a result of these population growth forecasts, between now and the year 2050, approximately as many people will be […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Huffing and puffing at the bus company from hell
It is just possibly the most despised commercial entity in South Africa. It has been threatened with closure by ministers, targeted by cops and sued for millions. It’s the intercity bus company from hell that regardless just keeps on trucking. SA Roadlink, labelled ‘Deathlink’ by its detractors, has, since its inception six years ago, been […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Time is running out – even Charles of Wales is worried
When Britain’s Prince of Wales shows clear signs of agitation at world leaders’ curious paralysis in the face of the rapid deterioration of planetary ecological conditions, it should send a message to everyone concerned. And that means every human being on the planet, where humans are (supposedly) the custodians of planetary “health” but have been […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The importance of private sector growth and development in Africa
The private sector is Africa’s primary engine of growth. It generates an estimated 70 percent of Africa’s output, approximately two-thirds of its investment and 90 percent of employment on the continent. Based on these statistics supplied by the African Union (AU), the creation and development of private sector jobs is seen as one of the […]