News/Politics

The race to become the Democratic presidential candidate is drawing to a close — with Barack Obama as the current front-runner. Yet, I hope Hillary will be first through the finishing line. It’s not because she, like me, is a woman (although it would be nice to have the most powerful person in the world […]

“We are proud, independent and free. Today ends all delusions that Kosovo will ever be ruled by Belgrade. We are the last bit to symbolise the disintegration of Yugoslavia.” — Declaration of independence by Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci on February 17 2008 There’s nothing like a new country to inspire writing. Yet another little […]

What is happening to the ANC? Raw power politics has replaced principle. Where are the women and men of heart and reason to raise their voices within the party now? Too few; too overrun by a new brand of leadership that has tasted state power and wants more of it, unfettered. Maybe this is why […]

Clinton or Obama? The media seem to believe that Election ’08 is strictly a two-horse race, with the Republicans given nary a chance. The question that’s being largely ignored, though, is whether the choice lies only between a black man and a white woman. Although I don’t follow American politics too closely — I loathe […]

The proposed pledge of allegiance for schoolchildren has already received voluminous comment from contributors to and diverse readers of Thought Leader. Minister Naledi Pandor said she could not see why people might have any problem with the pledge. Here’s an angle from the perspective of the Khulumani Support Group, the national non-party political membership organisation […]

Submitted by Suntosh Pillay What a day they had to choose! It’s ironic that the ANC’s Polokwane conference began on the Day of Reconciliation, December 16. But first, here’s two stories about four men. Zackie Achmat, leader of the Treatment Action Campaign, recently married Dallie Weyers, “an Afrikaans boy from the Free State”. They’re both […]

More than 50 years ago, in Kliptown, thousands of people adopted a Freedom Charter which proclaimed that “the people shall govern”. How might they have felt if they could imagine a day when the leadership of the African National Congress would insist instead that the people are not ready to govern? An interesting aspect of […]

I have been following the brouhaha over the proposed schools’ pledge with great interest and it has made me question whether there is such a thing as a South African identity or a South African nation. Most of the supposed outrage over the pledge comes predictably from white South Africans who have said things like: […]

The current reaction to Naledi Pandor’s youth pledge is another in a long line of negativity that seems to be infesting the white population at present. There seems to be this constant knee-jerk reaction of intense negativity that should not continue unchecked. Rational thought has to prevail in the face of seemingly mindless Pavlovian response. […]