Recently a young man lost his penis. The member in question was lost during an initiation ritual and when he attempted to ask the elders what to do about it (raising the matter in a public forum) he allegedly received a beating. The reason he got this beating? Because by speaking out the initiate was […]
News/Politics
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A queer understanding of community?
By Matthew Clayton* & Thorne Godinho** It should come as no surprise that South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex community is stratified along similar race and class lines as the rest of South African society. The big umbrella that is the LGBTI term actually falls short of being big enough to cover white […]
Posted inNews/Politics
If you vote, you can’t complain
By Colin Ibu Voting is a waste of time and energy better spent being genuinely political. For those of you who are so disempowered that you understand political participation to be limited to drawing an X twice a decade, and maybe signing an online petition when they get sent directly to your inbox, feel free […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
South Africa at 20: Storms behind the rainbow
April 27 marks the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections. Most of us remember those iconic images of citizens queuing up in long, snaking lines to vote Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) into power. It was an extraordinary moment, replete with hope and pregnant with expectation, enough to supply years’ […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time for the SANDF to slim down and shape up
It’s not a national secret that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is in serious trouble. Its barracks are unfit for human habitation, it has been haemorrhaging expertise and its soldiers teetered on the brink of mutiny in a protest march on the Union Buildings So when the government’s leaked long-term military strategy review […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The convenient democrats
To hear former Cabinet ministers from the salad days of the Thabo Mbeki presidency speaking of the “erosion of democracy” is as rich as a “Save the Angus Cow” campaign run by Ronald McDonald. It’s definitely legacy hour. How else could one explain the sheer size of ego that drives Mbeki-era mandarins (or should we […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Are we freeing our imagination for social good?
Growing up, visits to the public library were the highlight of my month. I would wake up bright-eyed and early on a Saturday morning and spend hours there, always indecisive about which books to take home. And there I’d be, safe and comfortable in this place of wonder and excitement and fantasy. You could hear […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Middle-class narratives and the disconnect with the poor
In January this year, numerous protestors were killed by the police in service-delivery protests, four of them simply for rising up to demand a most basic right — water. This is a contravention of human rights on many levels and while it sent shock waves through poor black working-class and marginalised communities, the broader middle […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
We need more gun owners in South Africa, not less
By Gideon Daniel Joubert Gun ownership in South Africa has again been thrust into the spotlight, in no small part thanks to the high-profile criminal case against Oscar Pistorius gracing our television screens and the front pages of almost every newspaper. It is mindboggling that the allegedly negligent actions of but one famous public figure […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The intimate and unbearable shackles of racism
You know this scene all too well: you’re in a supermarket and the person in front of you whispers a racist epithet under their breath. Apparently black shop clerks are to blame for shopping rush hours. Or you stumble into a serious debate where accusations of racism are used as a distraction to shut down […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma’s gilded battlements besieged by the public protector
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s long delayed report into the expenditure of at least R246-million of taxpayer money on President Jacob Zuma’s rural home at Nkandla is undoubtedly the non-fiction must-read of the year. And equally, were they to be collected into a single volume, the tripartite alliance’s attack dogs’ ongoing attempts at discrediting the report […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Help the ANC, vote for an opposition party
We are about to celebrate Human Rights Day, a day that reminds us of the Sharpeville slaughter, a day that commits us as a country “never again” to repeat such an atrocity. Precisely for this reason, the Marikana massacre will render our Human Rights Day hollow until those responsible — who pulled the triggers, who […]