News/Politics

It was in his 2000 State of the Nation address that President Thabo Mbeki — after reading an email by a white engineer that had at the core of its message the many ways black South African rulers had messed up the country, presumably for the previously advantaged minority — quoted Bertold Brecht, mainly, to […]

A High Court Justice in Botswana — nothing to do with the genius who was the first to be evicted from the Big Brother Africa house — has sentenced Michael Molefe of Soweto and a citizen of Botswana to be hanged for the murder of two Zimbabweans seven years ago. The reports of the dramatic […]

The Free Market Foundation’s Jim Harris did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and found some interesting statistics that suggest there aren’t all that many criminals in South Africa. It then proposes a market-based solution to the problem.

Recent calls by Gordon Brown for a cricket boycott against Zimbabwe are at face value justifiable — after all no one can disagree about the brutal kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe; but think about it less superficially, and it seems to be characteristic of the hypocritical sanctimony of the West. Let’s leave the implications of the […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: What should universities do to foster racial integration?

Why is it that we tend to look at the components rather than the whole when assessing South Africa? Isolate the negatives and aggregate them into a false reality that, looking forward, will translate into a bleak future without any prospects of redemption. Jacob Zuma’s meeting with the Jewish community was not only a success […]

Now the world thinks that Kenya is at peace again. Newspapers across the globe are running with news that Kenyans are the winners after last week’s agreement between presidential contenders Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. With a pen and paper and some applauding, everything comes back to normal. I find this absolutely laughable. It’s bitterly […]