After attending a few sessions at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown last week, I struggled to find an answer to the question: How will convergence make our democracy better? Discussion about digital media and convergence tends to focus on the medium rather than the message; on the technology of communication rather than the content. […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
The value chain, from A to Zim
Most of us who pick up a magazine or newspaper rarely think about the value chain resulting in the words we read ending up on paper. The chain for Y Mag, for example, starts a decade or more in the past, probably on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast when pine trees are planted in anticipation of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The trouble with Hillary Clinton
Before I begin this item, I’ve made a mental note to get myself a pair of flip-flops for our December holiday. Where were we? Oh, yes, Hillary “I voted for invading Iraq” Clinton. The trouble with Hillary is that she causes confusion in respect of two well-established political terms. She doesn’t “flip-flop” as much as […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Dear Helen Zille …
An open letter to the Mayor of Cape Town Dear Mayor Zille It is completely unacceptable that you were treated in such an unbecoming way by police on Sunday when you participated in the anti-drug march in Cape Town, the city where you are mayor. While I don’t necessarily agree with the ANC’s Smuts Ngonyama […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Report back: Iraq
It’s amazing how people see things so differently. To me, my girlfriend is the most beautiful, sensitive and caring woman in the world, yet to my wife … And so it proved with the report given by the United States ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and General David Petraeus to the congressional joint hearing of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Is the democratic honeymoon over?
I’m increasingly feeling that 2007 will be remembered as a seminal year in South African post-apartheid politics. It is shaping up to be a watershed year. I recently discussed the African National Congress’s 2007 as an annus horribilis, but it’s wider than the party. I think 2007 will go down as the year that South […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics, Tech
Just abolish the Dept of Communications
ITWeb reports that a letter has been sent to the police, half the government oversight committees and the presidency, in which fraud and kickback accusations related to the hiring of staff in South Africa’s Department of Communications are alleged.
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Hear your Thought Leaders …
This is not a post, just a plug. In the form of a post. If you haven’t yet heard the Mail & Guardian‘s weekly podcast Between the Pages, then this is as good a time as any to get on the bandwagon. The show has been going for 43 weeks now and, each week, we […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Who will deliver us from delivery?
A colleague who lectures in politics at Rhodes University has banned his students from using the word “globalisation” in class. Someone should follow his excellent lead by preventing all commentators who want to be taken seriously from using the word “delivery”. The reason he insists that people who use the word “globalisation” are not to […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Oh, Cecilia, you’re bringing me down!
They’ve dubbed her the new Greta Garbo, Jackie Kennedy or even Princess Di, but judging by her conduct they’ll soon be chanting: “Are you Cherie in disguise?” Cecelia Sarkozy — as may be seen from this article in the Sunday Telegraph — defended her role in the Libyan/Bulgarian medical staff release by going on about […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Finding myself
Along with about 300 other Capetonians, I have started a process of establishing my heritage. I was one of the people invited by the African Genome Education Institute, in partnership with Ancestry24, to take a test that would determine my family’s geographical origins. The event took the form of a town-hall meeting at Bishops High […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Media beware!
It doesn’t look too grand for media freedom in South Africa. I recently surfed the net on the search for some facts on how well we’re doing in growing our child, the new democracy with all its newly won freedoms, into a healthy teenager (now that we’re 13). What I found was a blow: according […]