News/Politics

On a smaller scale, but also inspiring to the huddled masses yearning to be rich, is that some sporting administrators managed to structure matters so that they could buy themselves Mercedes E-class limousines for only R1 each. That they achieved this while their organisation was technically bankrupt surely makes their entrepreneurship the stuff of legend and business school case study?

The problem with leniency in matters relating to sex offenders is that it creates a trend that is difficult to break until some learned judge decides that he has had enough and reverses it. Yesterday Cézanne Visser (Barbie) was sentenced to 7 years in prison having been found guilty of 11 sex-related charges, including indecently […]

This week saw the news that the UK government is considering shutting off NHS benefits for homeopathic treatment. Their argument is simple: there is no evidence that homeopathy works, so why should we be using taxpayers’ money to pay for people to use it? The notion that homeopathy is bunk may come as a surprise […]

On March 21 1960 South African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing 69 people, in what would become known around the world as “The Sharpeville Massacre”. On that occasion while the ANC was in the process of launching a campaign of protests against pass laws it was their rival Pan Africanist […]

The president of the Republic of South Africa is a joke, or so a Facebook group proclaims — almost shouting — “JACOB ZUMA is A JOKE (We are Disgusted and tired)” (sic). The group created after the revelations of the president’s love child with Irvin Khoza’s daughter, currently boasts in excess of 9 300 members (9 312 […]

Zuma said today that some people say ” ‘Zuma is causing a problem for himself’. I don’t think they understand me,” he said. It’s true Zuma. Some of us don’t. Then again, the life of a president must put some really intense pressures on a man. You can’t seem to say anything right, in fact, […]

Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and with all the doom and gloom going around, there is one issue that has upset me for a while. It’s not HIV/Aids, or crime, or violence against women, or unemployment, or the lack of proper housing for poor people, or drug abuse on the […]

Professor Pierre de Vos confirms my earlier interpretation that it is not illegal for ANC Youth League President Julius Malema to have business interests. “The ANC is correct to point out that in principle, it is not illegal or in contravention of any code of conduct for a company in which Julius Malema is involved, […]

President Robert Mugabe would cheer the zeal of Zuma’s protectors, while chuckling at their lack of legislative foresight. The Mugger of the Nation has long since made it a serious offence in Zimbabwe for anyone to demean his exalted status with zap signs, back-of-the-hand sniggers, lewd sucking noises, eye-rolling, nose-picking, earhole excavation or scrotum scratching. Arse-licking by his subjects remains tolerated, even encouraged.

While the ANC and ANCYL were issuing a statement condemning “with contempt” the Star newspaper for its article entitled “Malema’s millions”, Cosatu were calling for a lifestyle audit of political leaders. The trade union federation were subsequently joined by Sadtu, whose general secretary, Mugwena Maluleke, issued a statement after the union’s national executive council’s two-day […]

When ANC Youth League President Julius Malema addressed the National Press Club in Pretoria, following the heckling and booing of SACP delegates at Polokwane, he confirmed that this conduct was an invitation to war which the ANCYL was accepting. Fair enough. Those who had confused Malema’s reception by the SACP with that of a politician […]

Since its release last December Invictus has caused quite a stir among American movie-goers, garnering relatively high reviews from critics, bagging third place among box-office openers, taking home a series of award nominations, and — perhaps most importantly — winning airtime on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. But while director Clint Eastwood’s successes with this […]