News/Politics

If actions speak louder than words, the relinquishing of power by white South Africa in 1994 was worth far more than the mere mouthing of an apology by “whites” in 2008. Knee-jerk responses should always be regarded with cynicism, and the call this week for whites to say sorry for apartheid — in the wake […]

South Africans are racist as naturally as roses bloom. A struggle in which thousands were murdered, tortured, detained and persecuted to ensure a non-racial, non-sexist country appears meaningless to those who now preach the politics of exclusion, whether in right-wing journalist fora, universities or the workplace. More disturbing is seeing young people, the children of […]

Whatever disgust I felt at the conduct of the Forum of Black Journalists, it paled into insignificance when compared with the animals from the University of the Free State. Whatever drove those morons to carry out this latest outrage is irrelevant. They have to face criminal charges. Didn’t your mommies teach you basic human decency? […]

“Where they are going we don’t know,” says the minister of education about the kids in grades 10, 11 and 12 missing from school. She lost them? Seriously? She should have a chat with the minister of finance. He knows why those kids are not in school. Many 14- to 17-year-olds are not school-goers precisely […]

It has always been my assertion that the phenomenon we call human intelligence is as real as Santa Claus, leprechauns, tokoloshes and a politician’s conscience. Yes, yes, I’m generalising, but I think it’s a fair generalisation if it is true for the rule. Bugger the exception. One feature of human beings that illustrates this is […]

Adding to the national depression is the news that the president of the ANC and the putative next president of our country, Jacob Zuma, has approached the courts of a fellow SADC member, Mauritius, slagging off President Thabo Mbeki and our institutions, accusing him of using the National Prosecuting Authority to engineer a political conspiracy […]

Township blacks will not say the precise moment when it hit them, but it was a good few days after township “klever” Irvin Khoza allegedly made a booboo by calling a black journalist a “kaffir”. Slow thinkers that they are, they have now started noticing that the wise guys who protest too much about Khoza’s […]

Isn’t it ironic that the United States, thought to be at least a couple of elections away from being ready to accept its first black president, stands on the brink of doing just that while South Africa, with its 70% black majority, is sweating on the candidate chosen by the ANC for our next president? […]

Jon Qwelane’s column of February 18 2008, “Batten the hatches of escape”, expresses his concern — and no little anger — at the number of people, particularly those with skills, who are leaving South Africa. He asks whether it is not possible, on the one hand, for the government to make it more difficult for […]