As many of you have heard, there was further violence against women at the Noord Street Taxi rank earlier this month. Two young women were assaulted by a mob of violent men, justified by the premise that they shouldn’t have been wearing revealing clothing. We have been here before, and this violence is evidence that […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Who died and made Kemo Immanuel Waters a Reverend?
Remember the good old days when it was only “geniuses” who could get the editor of a newspaper to print their garbage and enjoy some sort of mass circulation? It was either that, or their father knew a producer on a radio station or at a television network who was willing to air their “interesting” […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The significance of recent protests for democracy
There is a certain historical justice about TIME magazine’s choice of its 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor, with the sub-script, “From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow”. What managing editor Richard Stengel writes on page 7 of this issue (December 26, 2011/January 2, 2012), resonates with Albert Camus’s […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Frankie’s mugging at the hands of the Woolies bullies
‘Tis the season past of warm and fuzzy feelings to all. Or so the corporates would have us believe, as they do their annual festive fandango of pinching our cheeks with one hand and our wallets with the other. After all the fake bonhomie, the heart sings when a business behemoth that spends mega-millions on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
An open letter to Angie Motshekga
Dear Madam I know that you are a busy person and this period in particular is the most hectic with centenary celebrations in full swing. I would like to congratulate you and your department, together with nine MECs and the respective departments in various provinces. Let me rather skip the pleasantries and get to the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
To succeed, the ANC must go back to the start
The African National Congress, Africa’s oldest liberation movement, has a glorious and illustrious history. The ANC has for the majority of the 100 years of its existence held the hopes and aspirations of the majority of black people in South Africa. This is the ANC that has always been creative and industrious in its fight […]
Posted inNews/Politics
ANC conservative nationalism and ambidextrous politicians – Open Letter to Phillip Dexter
Dear Dr Dexter, The formal style of address may seem cold and harsh but I cannot bring myself to refer to you as comrade or Phillip, as I have always done. The man who sat so smugly next to Marius Fransman yesterday, singing the praises of the ANC was not the one I fought alongside […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Apostasy and ducks in Afghanistan
“He’s the man!” Barham, my young Afghan colleague, said one morning as we inched through the godforsaken rush-hour traffic of Kabul, rocking through the frozen potholes. Barham proceeded to tell me that the rather timid-looking young man at the office had a black belt in karate and participated in full-contact fights. “Beneath that shirt of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
White Inc
There have been a few questions and unfortunate assumptions about what I meant with the term White Inc. This is a term that has featured a lot in my thoughts as I tried to grasp the extent of the resistance by a section of our society to the continuation of the fight against prejudice, privilege […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
There’s something odious about academic publishing
There is something terribly wrong about peer-reviewed scholarship and about academic publishing in general. It resembles an exclusive club of knowledge production where new knowledge is circulated among an elite group of scholars who confirm each other’s prejudices and biases and then pat each other on the back. In some ways, once new knowledge is […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
The fallibility of memory
I am in the final stages of research and writing a paper on memory which I expect to submit for peer review and publication early in the new year. This paper has proven most difficult to complete, least of all because I started doing research about eight months ago — at the beginning of a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Christopher Hitchens not great, says this “atheist”
It depressed me a bit to write the title for this column, playing on one of the late Hitchen’s book titles, God is not Great. I think nothing can ever be achieved by slamming other people’s religious beliefs. Those people are going to continue holding on to their beliefs. Perhaps even more dearly. The attack […]