News/Politics

On cue, at 12h25, just five minutes before President Jacob Zuma was due to give an economic briefing at Tuynhuys, the wind picked up in the parliamentary precinct and it started to rain. Cold drops in spring. Was the grey, leaden sky, I wondered, a portent from the gods about ill economic news? Had the […]

The wise words of former chief justice Pius Langa at a Press Freedom Day function last Monday highlighted the importance of freedom of expression. There are many in our society who do not understand this freedom and its responsibility. There is a need to be patient and tirelessly remind them of the dark days when […]

If you haven’t blogged, made a poster, built a sand castle or ran naked through the streets screaming “the climate changers are coming”, then you’re quite a tough cookie aren’t you? If you haven’t switched off the lights and sat in the dark or considered organic eggs or experimented with recycled bath water in your […]

I have to admit that I did not read the report on which the Cape Times based its “Cape Town is a racist city — study” banner headline last Thursday (October 22 2009). I did try to get a copy of the report, commissioned by the Employment Equity Programme and conducted by Sabie Surtee and […]

“Premier appoints all male cabinet”, “All male cabinet is a betrayal of women” ranted the headlines in May. I am writing, of course, of the headlines in Britain’s newspapers when Margaret Hilda Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter, appointed an all-male cabinet thirty-years-ago. When Helen Zille was to do exactly the same in May of this year, […]

What is the colour of milk these days? Red maybe? It is white of course, unless your supplies are flowing straight out of Grace Mugabe’s dairy farm, so says the rabid press and thousands of citizens of that cyberspace community known as Facebook. Zimbabwe’s first lady has in recent weeks been the subject of her […]

Retired former liberation heroes (like Nelson Mandela) and struggle stalwarts now turned into government ministers (like Trevor Manuel) cannot enjoy the sight of upheavals like those in Sakhile township near Standerton, Mpumalanga or Khutsong in Carltonville. Can you believe the number of disgruntled people who want the world to believe that our democratic government is […]

We’ve all seen those videos on the news where Osama bin Laden speaks, delivering messages about blowing stuff up, the evilness of this or that person, calling this nation or that nation the scourge of the planet and threatening them with a painful death and imminent destruction. The ones that really set his place in […]

The gloss of Professor Jonathan Jansen’s inauguration as vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State has been taken off by the resounding criticism of his decision to drop charges against the “Reitz Residence” students. Four students were suspended when a 2007 video came to light where they were humiliating five staff at their residence. […]

Politics have existed for as long as social classes became pronounced in every fabric of human existence. During the aristocratic age the privileged minorities presided over those considered lowly in the pecking order of society while under democracy we have been duped to believe that the lowly masses exercise power through their elected representatives. Democracy […]

Julius Malema is fast becoming a national treasure: the pantomime’s grand dame of South African politics. He is also, unwittingly, a fabulous source of national unity: he draws us all altogether in mirth, condemnation and embarrassment. Yet, I am convinced the media have, largely, invented Malema’s personae with our connivance. It is a shame that […]