The Arab Spring has shaken the Middle East and an innovative diplomacy is needed today in order to take advantage of the current shifts in the Middle East’s strategic architecture. An increased level of uncertainty has been generated under which most Middle East countries are unwilling to make any concessions with lasting strategic implications. Furthermore, […]
News/Politics
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Keith Hart on money, memory and democratising the economy
Keith Hart begins his thought-provoking book The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (Profile Books, London, 2000) with the statement: “Ours is an age of money. Half the world worships money and the other half thinks of it as the root of all evil. In either case, money makes the world go round. If […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Seeing red: This is what hate speech looks like
What is the Red October movement hoping to achieve through its hate-based hodgepodge discourse that is a bizarre combination of radical left communist speak and backward racist doctrine, peppered with obtuse analysis and expedient misinterpretation of social statistics. No really — what do they see at the end of this tunnel vision? Do they think […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Zuma doesn’t read and other myths
“This is not a pipe,” reads the caption beneath the painting. With only a cursive scribble and signature — “Magritte” — you begin to wonder if this isn’t one of those overdone visual puns. Magritte, the Belgian painter and provocateur is right. This is not a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. One […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The death penalty is more anti-black than Malema realises
The recent utterances by EFF leader Julius Malema that should the EFF become the ruling party he will hold a referendum for people to decide whether they want the death penalty reinstated, are reckless. They indicate to me that he has no appreciation for the historical constructs of this country and has not bothered to […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
The madness of capital
Last month the Associated Press reported that the income gap in the United States broke a new record in 2012, with the 1% grabbing a greater share of total household wealth than ever before in history. This news follows on the heels of the fact that the 1% not only captured all of the income […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The ICC is not Africa’s enemy
On New Year’s Eve in 1989 in Monrovia, Liberia, 17-year old Leymah Gbowee was finishing high school and looking forward to starting university to study to become a doctor. Like many middle class Liberians at the time she did not think that the coup by Charles Taylor on 24 December 1989 from the outskirts of […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A comprehensive guide to white privilege in South Africa
After spending two hours on Aubrey Masango’s Radio 702 show Talk@9 this week, fielding questions and accusations around my views on racism and attempting to explain white privilege to white callers, I decided to write an extensive guide to recognising white privilege, borrowing from this anonymous Thought Catalog document, which extrapolates from Richard Dyer’s work […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Voting is no favour to any political party
By Gugu Ndima There is a growing concern at the rate in which the loosely categorised “born-frees” or “Mandela generation” is registering to vote. The current percentage of young people eligible to vote between the ages of 18 and 29 currently sits at 8.4%. As a nation this should be of grave concern given that […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Stealing black people’s pain
By Gcobani Qambela and Simamkele Dlakavu The results of the last South African census revealed a South Africa deeply divided along racial lines, with the black majority “still at the bottom of the rung” according to President Jacob Zuma. In terms of average annual income, a white household earns about R365 000 while a black household […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The white angst of Red October
Singer and aspirant politician Steve Hofmeyr delivered a heart-wrenching ode to the splendours and disappointments of Afrikaner white masculinity at the Red October march in Pretoria. But to get an even better sense of the thinking behind the campaign, just look at the two sponsors of its website: Comfizone and the Pistols Saloon. It’s so […]
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle, News/Politics
The Silk Road: should drugs be legalised?
Please excuse the brief nature of this blog, the subject definitely merits a longer discussion at some point, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the recent closure of The Silk Road drugs bazaar and the arrest of the person whom the FBI believe to be its founder, Ross Ulbricht, and more generally on […]