Over the past week I’ve wanted to add my two cents’ worth to the (whining) discussions on the power cuts — each time I thought about what I wanted to write, I’d get up in the morning, read the headlines and realise that what I have to say could lead to a cyber-stoning. Not because […]
News/Politics
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
JZ killed the weekly newsletter
The Sunday Times has welcomed the fact that Jacob Zuma won’t continue the tradition of a weekly ANC president’s e-comment. The implication being: we no longer have to wade through screeds/screens of high-brow discourse each week. Au contraire — the change means there will be even fewer opportunities to get a handle on JZ’s thinking […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Thrown to the lions
The Chinese zoos that allow patrons to buy live chickens, goats and cows and toss them into the lion enclosure so that people can enjoy them being ripped apart has been a lead story in many local and international newspapers this month (also see Saturday Star, p13, January 19 2008). Zoo patrons are allowed to […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The curious incident of the ratings agency and the developmental state
Something strange happened last week. An international credit ratings agency told us we should act more like a developmental state. Standard & Poors — which does credit ratings of countries and large companies — warned that South Africa’s power utility Eskom needed a financial injection from the government in order to cover the costs of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Swartruggens burning
In 1964, Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, set in motion a preconceived plan for the elimination of Michael Schwerner, a civil rights worker. Schwerner, a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (Core), was trying to help African-Americans gain the right to vote in Mississippi, which […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Empowering ourselves
It is so easy to be a victim, to blame someone else and to shrug off responsibility. I’m referring to things such as crime and education, employment equity and gender equality at some level, but what I actually want to get into is the power situation and how each of us affects and contributes to […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Eish! Our divided country
I don’t normally respond to comments on my writing. I believe that writers have the first word and should not necessarily have the last word. But the beauty of the internet and blogs is that no one really has the last word. The blog writer starts a debate that can continue as long as needed. […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Is Snuki not part of the mass media?
Can it be that Jacob Zuma — unlike many millions of other South Africans — never watches SABC TV news bulletins, or that he never listens to the many radio stations broadcasting in all South Africa’s official languages every day to more than 26-million South Africans? Has he ever heard of and does he sometimes […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Clinton found her own voice in New Hampshire and now it’s speaking about Lewinsky
Ten years after the Monica Lewinsky scandal rocked the White House, Hillary Clinton is again finding her voice. This time it’s not an off-the-cuff admission in a coffee shop in New Hampshire, but rather a calculated move on Fox Television. The Senator from New York described the pain and embarrassment she suffered as a result […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Tiger Brands, give us our daily bread!
The past week, I have been busy taking electricity-evading classes from my township mates in preparation for the 14,2% electricity price increase. Just as I was beginning to learn the basics of electricity evasion, an announcement arrived that said bread would increase in price too. In this blog I was going to talk about electricity, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
No, Mr Zuma, the media are not out of touch with reality …
“A decade and four years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Vindication for the racists
It’s not funny. It’s actually pretty scary. But all the white racists who voted “no” in the 1992 referendum, which asked white voters whether they’d be okay with “power sharing” with the ANC, are vindicated. Turns out there’s not enough power to share.