News/Politics

It’s what farting is to American comedies. You know the script writers have already run out of their already thin ideas when the backsides start to crackle and trumpet. It’s throwing your tomatoes at the curtains after the bungled, boring show is over, or your naartjies at the rugby field after a poor performance but […]

Any university student has a sad story to tell about the death of student politics, the inefficiency of modern day SRCs and the general mediocrity of South Africa’s youth politics. They also harbour strong views about one Julius Malema who is fast becoming a loose cannon. Most urban youths agree that, after watching gallons of […]

Here is the thing with Mbeki’s fabled “quiet diplomacy”: it has not, does not and will not work. While Mbeki and his simpering entourage of struggle buddies have been donning their Armani suits and hopping north on their private jets for the last few years, Zimbabwe has steadily accelerated into anarchy under their entrusted watch. […]

When the United States and the European Union indicated that they would assist Zimbabwe if the power sharing deal gave de facto control to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, it offered the parties the prospect of substantial progress in bringing material relief and a start to rebuilding the country. It also afforded the Zanu-PF an […]

In case you aren’t aware of the Duckworth-Lewis method, it is in fact a mathematical formula used in cricket to calculate what the team batting second has to score in order to win, as a result of the match overs being reduced by bad weather. This calculation it seems has now been extended by Allan […]

Unless I’m very much mistaken, every morning the senior leadership members of the ANC are requested to remove their shoes in order to inspect their feet and thereby avoid putting a bullet in the same foot as they did the day before. And every day almost like clockwork the sounds of gunshots ring out from […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: What was the defining moment of 2008?

I remember giving up on my country a couple of years ago. I remember being really frustrated with the national fixation on Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe and not being able to see beyond the struggle that was day to day life. I imagined that there were bigger, more important things happening in the rest […]

South Africans remember December 16 as the day of extraordinary courage on part of thousands of Zulu warriors under the command of Dambuza and leadership of Dingane kaSizangakhona who, armed with spears, launched an offensive against Voortrekkers, with the advantage of gunpowder, in the battle that historians coined as the Battle of the Blood River […]