News/Politics

By Sarah Logan It was with disbelief that I read Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s recent demands for an apology from the EU for the sanctions placed on him and his inner circle since Zimbabwe’s disputed 2002 presidential elections. The thought of him demanding such an apology is hilarious, apart from being downright outrageous. However, as […]

I have never met Ann Coulter. I doubt that I’m important enough to warrant an invitation to an event of the Young Republicans, and certainly I’m not conservative enough to be considered “one of them”. On the one occasion that I invited Ms Coulter to an online debate on “liberalism vs conservatism — finding the […]

No-one would disagree that Robert Mugabe has to go. Would a violent coup or a Nuremberg style witch-hunt be of any benefit to ordinary Zimbabweans? No one in their right mind would argue that removing Mugabe from Zim politics (some would say Zim itself) is the best way to handle the Zim situation. It certainly […]

Ray McCauley and the Rhema Church exercise an inappropriate influence over President Jacob Zuma and seek to change South Africa’s liberal democratic Constitution. Though the relationship between Zuma and McCauley is not institutionally formalised, the Rhema founded National Interfaith Leadership Council, as Mandy Rossouw’s rigorous investigative reporting last week reveals, plans to challenge the Constitution: […]

Yep, I am afraid that is the question that has been going through my mind for the last week or so. Would there be such a furore if she had been white? I think not. That is to say, there would not have been such sputterings from the sports minister and Reverend Stofile has threatened […]

The Times on their fabulous new site had an item about the “Plan to dumb down matric” for South African pupils which automatically got me thinking that the geniuses who had come up with this idea had probably achieved a dumbed-down matric themselves. It entails a distinction in any subject, if this proposal goes ahead, […]

I think we have to admit that to some extent the Convention for a Democratic South Africa in the early 1990s set us up for failure. This is so because the social, political and economic landscapes of this beautiful country are potholed with contradictions. Many of the injustices and inequalities are structural. Some prefer to […]

A lot of people have been calling for his honour Judge Nkola Motata to hit the road (rather than the fence this time). But I don’t agree. He has to stay. In fact we need more judges like him. No more of these hoity-toity men sitting up high in their robes, casting down their sombre […]

It is September and the blossoming of the spring will always remind us of a flower that was killed before it could radiate beauty. You might hear about Steve Bantubonke Biko and it will make you wonder why he was killed. What a terrible waste of a young life. He was only 30 years old. […]

Ah, the race card. Where would we be without it? Zapiro sums the latest up quite nicely here. Owing to my research for the insult books, I’ve been collecting fine examples of the use of the race card for years. Amongst my more recent acquisitions: “They want to undermine the African Union and (South African) […]

President Jacob Zuma is, as the cliche goes, the consummate politician. One of his most likeable qualities is that he is an instinctive politician. He feels it in the gut: his political antennae uncannily aligned to the electorate’s bandwidth. Clearly a “people’s person”, Zuma is an eminently likeable, charming, dapper dude. Refreshingly too, unlike most […]