Thought Leader

I take great exception to larceny. It is something that just irritates me. Then again sarcasm also irritates me, and for what its worth I don’t think that highly of narcissism either. Notice that all three of these words: larceny, sarcasm and narcissism have the letters ~arc~ in the middle of them. That must mean…

The American midterm elections – halfway through the American president’s term, where voters decide on their representatives in the two houses of American ‘democratic’ government, Congress and the Senate (as well as on some state governors) – take place tomorrow, on 6 November 2018, and all indications are that these will be the most significant…

By Zdena Mtetwa-Middernacht It is Election Day in Belgium. I am not voting but I’ve taken the walk to the polling station. The polling station is a school a few hundred meters from our home, in a little Flemish town on the outskirts of Brussels. I’m at the playground with the kids while my husband…

Watching the tragicomedy playing itself out in America around the determined attempt on the part of Trump and the Republicans on the Senate, to appoint Brett Kavanaugh as lifetime judge on the panel of judges of the US Supreme Court, I had the uncanny feeling that this showdown between the forces of retrogressive neoconservatism and…

Avidity defined as: keen interest, enthusiasm or “a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something”. Now that we’ve got that out the way I can focus on what it is that has conjured this feeling that I have. It is not just the freedom of a new keyboard, typing hasn’t been this comfortable…

In the Preface to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s major work, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, 1983, p. xii) Michel Foucault — another formidable post-structuralist thinker — makes the following observation in his brilliant characterisation of the book, where he lists the hostile forces targeted by Deleuze and Guattari: Last but not…

Don’t call me “kaffir” I’m not your prison Bitch Don’t blame me for the sociopathology I’m not the architect of this wrongful state You rant and rave like a lunatic Yet you claim to be fighting for the oppressed Your presentation and demeanour tells us for whom you work That tells us you’re not independent…

Recently, in Johannesburg, I caught up with Shaheen Hoosen, from the Minara Chamber of Commerce, and was pleasantly surprised to find a chamber of commerce guided by Islamic principles for the Muslim community, involved with both business development and trade development. Intrigued by the idea of such a specialised chamber of commerce, I prodded the…

By the day I am more and more astonished that the ANC — with a leader whom I used to regard as an intelligent man — is forging ahead with an expropriation policy that can have only one result: lowering the economic status of South Africa to rock bottom, where it can rub shoulders with…

Recently Ahed Tamimi was released from prison, after eight months. Apparently Israeli soldiers are cry-babies. Shame, a little Palestinian girl slapped an Israeli soldier, and was imprisoned for doing so. That doesn’t say much about Israeli soldiers. Cowards! Unfortunately Ahed Tamimi was unable to participate in this interview …she is under probation right now so…