News/Politics

Africans have come together to demand that wealthy countries take responsibility for messing up the planet. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said that Africa demands equal partner status at the global climate summit to be held in Copenhagen this December. “Africa will not be there warming the chairs or making token statements,” Zenawi said. Africa […]

“Quite early on after the bomb I realised that if I was filled with hatred and desire for revenge I’d be a victim forever. If we have something done to us, we are victims. If we physically survive, we are survivors. Sadly, many people never travel any further than this. I did travel further, going […]

By Sipho Hlongwane Ever since the SABC started strangling itself through a series of monumental cock-ups, there has barely been anything worth watching on TV. I’m not too depressed about that. Who needs the SABC when we have our politicians? I don’t think we’ve had a dull moment in South African politics, at least not […]

So Julius Malema has upped the ante in his campaign against Nedbank, the unfortunate target of his ire after they withdrew their sponsorship of Athletics South Africa in the wake of the Caster Semenya debacle. “When we called for Nedbank senior managers to engage us on this matter, they sent junior black managers. We will […]

Barack Obama, to be candid, probably clinched the Nobel Peace Prize when he secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination last year. He has proved that words, not just actions, have power to heal in the television age. His elegant and powerful cadences have reverberated not just across that “arsenal of democracy” called America, but the […]

The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo is a sort of religious site. Sitting adjacent to the harbour in central Oslo, a spot that could easily pass for Cape Town’s waterfront, the Peace Centre is a temple for serious diplomats, earnest hippies and wide-eyed, encyclopaedia-stuffed kids. I suppose the plush building is to idealistic peace-mongers what […]

It is with great interest that I have been following the careers of Eugene Terre’Blanche and Julius Malema. In some ways, both of them remind me of the bad things that we have tried to put behind us in this country. They both remind me of children who, in their frustration to get their points […]

Mo Shaik : shall mean the manifestation of fever symptoms every time you hear that the Spy Boss is on your trail eg “I’m being investigated that’s why I have Mo’ Shaiks” NB You don’t get Mo’ Shaiks from high blood pressure, that’s a misconception. Your appearance might become dirtier hence they speak of Shabbier […]

“The Merchant of Death is Dead”. As the legend goes that is the headline that changed Dr Alfred Nobel’s life. When a French newspaper prematurely published his obituary, the good doctor was confronted with a vision of how the world would remember him. As the purveyor of the finest instruments of mayhem and murder. The […]

Our national commissioner of police has now announced that he will soon become a general as the police force reverts to its apartheid-era military ranking system. Our soon-to-be general tells us that this reversion to a past age is necessary because the demilitarisation of policing ranks in 1995 impacted negatively on discipline in the police. […]

Isn’t it ironic that Alfred Nobel, a man who spent his life designing and working with explosive devices should be responsible for creating the Nobel Peace Prize? Isn’t it even more ironic that President of the United States Barack Obama — who once claimed to be ready to invade Pakistan while still on the campaign […]

Recent reports have emerged about violent attacks in the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban. Members of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (or urban shack-dwellers movement) were pulled from their homes, violently attacked and some of them were murdered. It sounds like somebody huffed and puffed and tried to blow this movement down. Why? But more importantly, […]