News/Politics

I have been listening to Bantu Holomisa speak for the past 21 years. On Thursday night I heard him again at the University of Johannesburg. Attendees were told that the Major General would deliver a lecture on his initiative to include a question about citizens’ views on constituency representation in the election manifestos of political […]

Back in the 1990s, the internet phenomenon du jour, the lolcat or Rickrolling of its day, was the Kevin Bacon game. Invented by a pair of college students, it was based on the premise of six degrees of separation: Kevin Bacon could be linked to anyone in Hollywood on the basis of films in which […]

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to like Allan Boesak again. I went off him around about the time that Elna went on him. Thing is, people like me need somebody to stand up for us, just as some of us (yes, whites!) spoke up for the oppressed back in the darkest […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Zimbabwe talks see-saw once again: Will we ever see the end of it?

If you closed your eyes or, even with open eyes, let your imagination travel a bit, it could have been a scene from a political rally in the 1980s. Dr Allan Boesak, former United Democratic Front patron, stood triumphantly in front of a crowd in excess of 2 000, holding his hands aloft à la Rocky […]

The Zimbabwe debacle was brought about by an elite who, upon learning that the policies that they propounded were no longer popular to the majority, utilised the constitution, legislative machinery and existing structures of government to decimate their country in order to retain power. In fact if you were to ask members of their government, […]

With South Africa and Zimbabwe overrun with infringements of human rights and abuse, a local human rights delegation elected to travel to Israel to assess the situation there. Local communities are at present subjected to a flagrant disregard for their basic human rights through failure to deliver speedily on promises of essential services, housing and […]

In 2005 the President of the Republic Thabo Mbeki kicked his deputy Jacobus Zuma to curb. We are all knowledgeable of the circumstances that led to an unceremonious departure of then Deputy President of the Republic; and the shenanigans that followed such a momentous occurrence. Following the much lauded dismissal of the deputy president, the […]

During the oppressive stations of life, it was not uncommon to hear demeaning utterances about the nature of black people in general; utterances that suggested that black people are inherently brutal, criminal and represent the savagery that mankind never witnessed; that they are incapable of adopting a certain moral code or assimilating certain moral sentiments. […]