Looking at the picture of the two young students from Tuks, one of the things I would like to know is: Does that paint not itch? Sweat and a thick coat of paint, they surely are strange bedfellows. Nevertheless, it seems that even the green Sunlight block of soap will not wash this paint away; […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Pallo Jordan is no fraud
Clarity of thought and articulate intellectual leadership is neither a product of holding a PhD nor the result of spending years to acquire one-dimensional professionalised knowledge to be an expert or a guru. Rather, it comes from a deep-seated passion and love for what America’s leading thinker Cornel West defined as the “life of the […]
Posted inEquality, Health, News/Politics
Black girl desire in a time of hopelessness
I remember very well the first “sex talk” I had with my mother. We were in the rural areas for the holidays when my cousin pulled me aside to tell me that there were red spots on my trousers. What was to follow was a confusing day where I felt my body had betrayed me […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
When ‘Under the Dome’ turned into ‘7de Laan’
Seldom had I looked forward to a TV series with so much excitement as the sequel to Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Alas, the second series turned out to be a damp squid. In my mind, there are two Stephen Kings. There is the Stephen King who is a genius of horror fiction. But there […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A toyi-toyi for Doek Fridays
On Friday, the department of arts and culture introduced a “Wear a Doek Fridays” campaign to mark Women’s Month. Women took to the streets of Twitter brandishing retweets of outrage. With each minute the Twitter numbers started to swell. A sign that those without a 3G internet connection were arriving at their places of work. […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
When the system betrays our children
This was supposed to be a weary and fairly snide thinkpiece lamenting the ridiculousness of having a Women’s Day, a Women’s Month, that is completely associated with pink and flowers and whatever other qualities are deemed appropriately womanly. (Apparently, this includes wearing a doek.) Instead, I was reminded once again that I live in a […]
Posted inHealth, News/Politics
Medical care or medical cruelty? Time to make gentle that parting embrace
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, with customary forthrightness, recently broke ranks with his own church to plead for a “mind shift” in the “right to die” debate. “I think when you need machines to help you breathe then you have to ask questions about the quality of life being experienced … Why is a life that […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The latest neo-fascist threat from Cosatu: Should I laugh or start worrying?
Earlier this week, the Western Cape branch of Cosatu put out a statement that, even by the increasingly feral standards of hard-core left-wing politics in South Africa, was quite extraordinary. Issued in the name of Provincial Secretary Tony Ehrenreich, this presented the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) with an ultimatum to cease its “Zionist […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
ANC must quit the alliance
For many people the last 20 years was a period of lost opportunities characterised by mediocre progress on the economic front and unmet promises. On the contrary, the ANC claims that there is a good story to tell. For the owners of capital, it has indeed been a period of unprecedented growth in their wealth […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
#Bringbackourgirls, Lwandle, Gaza and detaching from this world
It started with the #Bringbackourgirls campaign. I hadn’t followed the story closely, but when I read articles to make sense of what had happened, I couldn’t make sense of it. I tried to imagine people coming into my school and taking away the students and there being no sense of security or outcry. I tried […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
David Saks and the naturalness of white contempt
In Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (edited by Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla), Ama Biney notes in the chapter “The Historical Discourse on Humanism: Interrogating the Paradoxes” that Aimé Cesaire notably made the case that Hitler’s crime was mainly that “he applied to Europe colonialist procedures, which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
An amputation for our Frankenstein anthem?
The October 10 1997 Government Gazette announced that the national anthem committee, chaired by Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo, had completed its work. The professor had presided over the successful animation of a creature. A creature comprised of parts taken from the bodies of each of our lived histories. For one group this creature was a repugnant […]