News/Politics

The quality of products coming out of the production line of trade unions has often been very questionable; we have been overwhelmed by defective products the likes of Zwelinzima Vavi, Gwede Mantashe and other trade unionists of suspect politics. This is not inspiring any confidence that even the barest minimum requirements of the SABS quality […]

The Eastern Cape is one of our most beautiful provinces. It is a place where many of our revered struggle luminaries — Madiba, Chris Hani, Walter Sisulu, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo — were born and spent their formative years. Fourteen years after the dawn of democracy, it remains one of our poorest provinces, wracked by […]

Regular readers will know that I am a strong supporter of transformation in South African sport and vehemently opposed to tokenism. I have not only written numerous articles on the subject but also pledged the entire proceeds of my forthcoming book to transformation in rugby. The children of South Africa, primarily those in our underprivileged […]

The defeat of the United Nations resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe was the right result but for the wrong reason. China, with the Olympic Games just a few short months away and seeking to avoid confrontation, indicated that its veto basically fell with Russia’s. Had the latter gone with the resolution the Chinese would […]

Commentaries to the KKK post were fascinating. First of all, let me say that the KKK post was in part, at least, a tongue-in-cheek piece. Hence the reference to the graffiti at the start of the post. This is not to say that I do not take the Klan seriously as a “hate group” in […]

There have been several comments to the two pieces I posted on this space in the past week or so. I will attempt to address only two in this submission. Let me start by providing some information on our investigation into human trafficking, or a slave trade between South Africa and Mozambique in the late […]

Barack Obama may not be King Henry II and the Reverend Jesse Jackson is certainly no Thomas Becket but I’ll bet you anything that the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee wishes that he could have dealt with this fellow as the Royals used to do in the good old days. Something along the lines of “I’m […]

Fuel hikes, exploding food prices, major economic down turns and a world gripped in social instability raise serious questions about the future development of civilisation. This is to be expected, yet not only because the twenty first century poses challenges unique to the era of globalisation, but more so because more and more people get […]

I would in most likelihood not be amiss to suggest that we do indeed live in interesting political times; we face a future in which we may be led by man with allegations of corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and money laundering hanging over his almost deformed head. It has become unquestionably apparent that this populist […]

There was a piece of graffiti in Johannesburg sometime during the 1980s. A cynical artist wrote the word “Izit” across a slogan that read: “The AWB is coming”. Much as I would like to, I cannot convey that same sentiment in this brief post, but… the Ku Klux Klan are coming! Actually, that might have […]

Almost 20 years ago I, along with colleagues from the Weekly Mail, Eddie Koch and Phil Molefe, investigated a case of human trafficking between South Africa and Mozambique. We found that African teenagers, some as young as 14, desperate to flee the carnage of civil war in Mozambique, were rounded up and “sold” to white […]