So there’s this scientist, right? And he and his team do something amazing. They land a satellite on a comet. How cool is that?! Possibly the coolest thing since Felix Baumgartner decided that skydiving is too mainstream. But that shirt. Eish, that shirt. The scientist, Matt Taylor, wore a shirt plastered with drawings of semi-naked […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Geldof ends Ebola
LONDON, United Kingdom The world burst into spontaneous applause today after Bob Geldof announced that Band Aid’s song for Africa — Do They Know It’s Christmas — had cured the Ebola virus. Band Aid is the super-pop-cum-aid group that stopped famine in Ethiopia with song in the early eighties. Band Aid’s original, star-studded recording was […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Gauteng education department ‘kacks bark’
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa Gauteng Education released an angry worded statement, lashing out at critics who pointed fingers at the provincial department for poor spelling in a “Mathematical Literacy P1 Memorandum”. This memorandum was an answer sheet handed out to teachers by the Ekurhuleni North District for a grade 11 standardised maths literacy exam, which contained […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Order, order: A parliamentary mess
The events that occurred in Parliament last week have generated a significant amount of debate in South Africa. And for good reason. Police entered the Chamber in 1966 when an apartheid-era prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was assassinated on the floor of the House by a messenger in the Old Assembly. No one died last week. […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Ray-Ban, Sea Point, you didn’t make nice, man
By Charlotte Johnson I work in public art. I take public art personally. I also believe in its relevance and importance in shaping our cities. And so, I cannot muffle the offence that Perceived Freedom has caused me. And many others, for a number of different reasons. Firstly, public art costs money. A fair amount […]
Posted inNews/Politics
ANC ends period of parliamentary pleasantness
CAPE TOWN, South Africa The African National Congress (ANC) today announced that the ruling party had ended its period of congeniality in SA’s parliamentary caucus. “We rolled out the red carpet to welcome the EFF and their ugly onesies to Parliament, but after they made the parliamentary caucus raucous, there will be no more Mr […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
South Africa’s three words everybody loves to hate
As someone who, in the grand old liberal tradition (I’m not sure if there is anything grand or old in the liberal tradition, but, if I had to choose a tradition, that’s probably the one I’d chose in spite of it being utterly impractical and unfashionable) generally considers the rights of the individual as more […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, News/Politics
Climate change: We have passed the 11th hour
In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio — one of the few so-called celebrities in the world who seems to care about matters ecological — produced a disturbing film on runaway climate change called The 11th Hour, directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners. Like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth before it, it was a wake-up call, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Humpty Cosatu’s fall is the best news in a long time
The Humpty Dumpty of South African trade unionism has fallen off the wall. And all Emperor Zuma’s horses and all Emperor Zuma’s men never will put Humpty together again. Callooh, callay, oh frabjous day! On balance, the exit of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) from union federation Cosatu is a damn […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protecting Zuma by force: A dishonourable Parliament
Last night ANC MPs showed South Africa how far they were willing to go when others attempted to hold them to account. In the hours of bedlam, heckling, and howling[1] the ANC managed to push South Africa’s democracy to the brink. The ANC not only voted to protect President Jacob Zuma, who according the Public […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Why Zuma’s resignation is true if we say so
How do you get more than 350 000 visits to your website in just a few days? Claim that the South African president has resigned. Siyathokoza Khumalo created an online media frenzy with a blog post on November 3 facetiously titled President Jacob Zuma has resigned. Social media went nuts and the hashtag #ZumasResigned is still […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Beyoncé, ‘Girls’: The new prophets of self-obsession
I don’t like Lena Dunham, but I have my reasons. Dunham is the writer and creator of Girls, one of those “edgy”, sometimes-women-are-naked shows on HBO. Girls follows the lives of four young (and almost permanently and perhaps proudly unemployed) New Yorkers as they navigate the melodrama of their loveless love lives and self-induced trauma. […]