Thought Leader

By Sandiso Bazana Reading the Times Live article about the introduction of Mandarin in South African schools made me question the vision that African leaders have of Africa and whether they see Africa prospering on its own — have they given up on the ideal once proclaimed by leaders such as Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold…

Some lessons I have learned from reporting on economic crises: * Don’t fixate on any one cause. Economies are complex webs of interrelated phenomena. Interest-rate changes are not the whim of the central bank, ie the Reserve Bank. They depend on a range of other economic actors, including our government and other economies in the…

Embattled police commissioner Riah Phiyega has come forward to explain the “eat your heart out” reference made in an SMS sent to DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard. Speaking via SMS, SA’s top cop said she heard the saying during a “Nigella show” and thought it would be applicable. She went on to explain the entire SMS…

Your blood asks, how were the wealthy and the law interwoven? With what sulphurous iron fabric? How did the poor keep falling into the tribunals?   How did the land become so bitter for poor children, harshly nourished on stone and grief? So it was, and so I leave it written. Their lives wrote it…

How does one articulate and make sense of the momentous changes that have taken place in the last three decades or so across the world, and that have not nearly run their course, if the existing vocabulary in the humanities is rapidly being unmasked as belonging to a different conceptual dispensation or “paradigm” – one…

Newspaper editors aren’t much given to introspection. Whatever their political hue, they tend to have a virtually unshakeable belief that their particular interpretation of reality is the correct one. It of course makes for spectacular miscalculations, such as when Peter Bruce, then Financial Mail editor, in 1999 urged voters to support the fledgling United Democratic…

Michael Brown was killed a year ago. They used to say, “It’s been a long, hot summer” but it’s been another long, hot, horror-filled year in the US; every single day another Michael Brown. This is someone I know. In high school, Kadeem was a force in the middle of the field. He owned his…

By Catherine Murphy Sex workers all over the world face a constant risk of abuse. This is not news. Nor is it news that they are an extremely marginalised group of people, frequently forced to live outside the law. No one would be surprised to learn that they face discrimination, beatings, rape and harassment —…

Quite often, when I log on to Twitter, I’ll see comments like the following: “What are we angry about today? Did I miss today’s Twitter outrage? I don’t know what we’re supposed to be angry about this week, but I’m outraged just in case.” It happens especially after incidents like Bic’s sexist Women’s Day ad…

When a new and inclusive democratic government was voted into power in 1994 we all rejoiced in the hope and trust that we were entering a new era led by a caring government that would be driven by the principles and values of ethical leadership. We also believed that the new democratic government would open…