By Angela Mudukuti There have been many significant developments in the world of international criminal justice recently. Last week the International Criminal Court confirmed charges against Ugandan Dominic Ongwen, recorded a guilty plea from Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi and convicted the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo. The International […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
ANC, the real clever blacks
By Lesego Setou I’ve been observing with great interest how the ANC is lining up its election strategy, and the strategy is simple, let’s blame President Jacob Zuma. Local elections are coming and the politicians are nervous, their elevated blood pressure is partly caused by the fear of losing Gauteng due to the e-tolls, not […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
There’s no dignity in education without proper sanitation
By Chandni Gopal and Zandile Ngubeni Human Rights month serves a dual purpose; we are reminded of the sacrifices that accompanied the struggle for the attainment of democracy in South Africa but are also afforded the opportunity to reflect on progress made in the promotion and protection of our hard-earned human rights. With this year […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
How to avoid an economic war
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India said “Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Nehru led a nation of hundreds of millions of poor Indians groaning under the postcolonial legacies that had shaped the subcontinent. Colonialism was not […]
Posted inNews/Politics
It’s not about capture but control
Catchphrases quickly move from being nifty idioms that ignite thought to clichés that stifle it. Such is the likely fate of “state capture”, a phrase that features in virtually every media account of President Jacob Zuma’s controversial relationship with the Gupta family. But what has been happening in the past weeks is not about state […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News/Politics
Alternatives to coal-fired electricity exist but there are no alternatives for water
By Penny-Jane Cooke The last quarter of 2015 saw five out of the nine provinces — KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West, including the breadbasket of the country, the Free State — declared as water disaster areas and by extension disaster areas for agriculture. Somehow, the linkages between how the intensive water use for coal-fired […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
‘Decolonisation’, the new ideology
Everywhere one looks today in South Africa you find a new imperative: “Decolonise!” In certain academic quarters it has evidently already attained the level of a new ideology, where academics are expected to “decolonise” the courses they teach (and presumably the articles they submit for publication as well). What astonishes me is that academics do […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Farewell Cuba
Barack Obama is in Havana tonight. What a sentence. From here in the belly of the beast, surrounded by the army, the army reserve, the navy, the air force, the marines, the coast guard, the national guard, nuclear warheads, stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the National Security Administration, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Is there a ‘reasonable person’ in charge of SA?
This week President Jacob Zuma went to Parliament to account to the people, as constitutionally a president periodically perforce must. The key issue was the role that his political benefactors, the Gupta clan, allegedly play in ministerial appointments. What a nation agog over a series of revelations from within African National Congress ranks had hoped […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Please lead ANC NEC, please lead now
Oliver Tambo said “The fight for freedom must go on until it is won; until our country is free and happy and peaceful as part of the community of man, we cannot rest”. Tambo was right. The fight in South Africa was for freedom and for happiness and peace. Since he said those words we […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News/Politics
We need to break the one sacred rule of the global economy
Scholars are still trying to figure out why the society on Easter Island collapsed, ending the people famed for their construction of towering stone heads. One interesting theory holds that it had to do with the heads themselves. Somehow, the islanders decided that the giant heads represented power and success, so different groups competed to […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
The horror of how our children die, I see it every day
Last week we heard of a teenager who went missing while running with her dog and family in Cape Town and was found murdered a few hours later. It’s a terrible story, the stuff of every parent’s absolute worst nightmare. We have all briefly lost sight of our children in a supermarket, at the park, […]