Once upon a time, e-tolls galvanised society. Like no other cause before or since, the hatred of e-tolls cut across class, politics and race. They were a superb nation-building tool, something I reflected on here. But things have changed. When e-tolls were finally implemented in early December, the battle was lost. Quite possibly the war, […]
News/Politics
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Born frees do not exist
Post-apartheid South Africa has many myths in different spheres of public life. The sphere of the battle of ideas has its fair share of such mythology. Since 1994, concepts such as South African exceptionalism, rainbow nation, lost generation, post-colony, white genocide, white fears and recently, born frees and many others have emerged across the political […]
Posted inNews/Politics
AfriForum and the rise of the new right
Barend Taute is lanky and laughs more than any politician probably should (he and I share the latter trait). He’s been the vice-chairperson of AfriForum Youth for nearly two years, and we first met to discuss the mess that is student politics at the University of Pretoria in 2012. As a liberal student activist I […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Signs of the times: The spectacle of mourning Mandela
By Matthew Rumbold “In an economic, elliptic, hence, dogmatic way, I would say that there is no politics without an organisation of the time and space of mourning, without a topolitology of the sepulcher, without an anamnesic and thematic relation to the spirit as ghost, without an open hospitality to the guest as ghost.” Jacques […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Be cruel to be cruel
It is May 1968. Raging in the streets of Paris, the (in)famous student uprisings. On the walls of the Sorbonne a slogan appears: “SOYONS CRUELS!” / “BE CRUEL!” Someone comes up to you and asks: “Have you seen this writing on the wall? What is it telling me to do?” Cruelty, by which I mean […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Triumph of capitalism: The new world plague
Some time ago, while working on a bigger project concerning contemporary society, I took Slavoj Žižek as my point of departure to raise the question of the state of the “ethical” today. This morning, when I was looking at Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (Routledge 1994) in the context of this project, I noticed a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Madiba and lessons in leadership
There is a common sentiment that Madiba’s passing enjoins us to pause and seriously reflect on the lessons of life that he has bequeathed to us and ask how seriously we have applied these lessons in our own lives. Indeed there could never be a better time to engage in this exercise and the themes […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Africa’s Achilles heel: Global capitalism
In 2010, during the 50th anniversary of African political independence, I wrote an article which provocatively proclaimed that developmental states remain a pipedream in Africa. There is no consensus on what has constrained the further advancement of our troubled African continent. Could it be, fundamentally, institutions as some have argued or leadership as many have […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The men and women who make SA great, sort of
To mark the passage of 2013, some annual awards to the men and women who make South Africa great. Or at least jaw-droppingly memorable. The Xenophobia Award goes to the SA Police Service for reminding us that it is still possible to be too black. The son of former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni was […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The Mandela moment: Now it’s time to move forward South Africa
The past few weeks have been a milestone in our country’s history — there’s no doubt about that. We’ve made huge pronouncements about how we are so very thankful for all that Madiba has done for us, how we pledge to continue and honour his legacy, how so much still needs to change. But what […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Don’t be another Mandela
By Kelebone Lekunya I think we have to acknowledge the big role that Nelson Mandela played for the “liberation” of the blacks and whites in South Africa. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should be obsessed with him to the extent of thinking of everything as being Mandela. The man played his part and left us […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
We need to talk about racism (TEDx Talk)
So here I am, on the TEDx stage, to deliver the message that makes me probably the most hated person in South Africa — as far as white many people are concerned. Certainly I have been called all sorts of horrible things including self-loathing, masochistic, a black-wannabe, a bitch, witch, man-hating dyke, mad women who […]