To anyone who has been paying close attention to developments in Zimbabwe since 2009 – after the formation of the government of national unity (GNU) – the 2013 election result was almost a forgone conclusion. Governments of national unity, as I have written elsewhere, create a false sense of security and unity in deeply polarised […]
News/Politics
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
The SAPS crime statistics – measuring what exactly?
It’s time for the Great Annual Bad Maths and Funny Logic Debate — you know, the one we have every year in which the SAPS tells us what a great job they’re doing combating crime and we all pick holes in their arguments in response. At one level there’s need of this, at another level […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Why commercial law?
Now and I again my friends, who seem never to pay attention to anything I tell them, ask me about my career plans. “So, which area of law will you specialise in?” they ask. When I tell them that I am training to specialise in commercial law, I see their curiosity whirling to awe. I […]
Posted inHealth, News/Politics, Tech
The dashed dreams of medical quackery
White South Africans harbour numerous carefully nurtured prejudices about their fellow citizens and delusions about themselves. One is that blacks are uneducated and backward, eschewing reason for superstition. Whites, in contrast, are masters of reason, hacking a scientific path through thickets of ignorance. Such assumptions are particularly glaring in health matters. Although the term “witchdoctor” […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Living in constant fear
ON Thursday 19 September, South Africans heard why this remains a country where its people are still living in constant fear. Two decades of African National Congress self-interest and bungling have failed to curb crime, despite the asinine claptrap with which SA’s minister of police Nathi Mthethwa insulted the country. Millions of ordinary South Africans […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Neoliberalism: ‘Stop thinking because this is it’
“What is neoliberalism?” The young American student looks at me with faux innocence of the wide-eyed sort. She’s not sure what it is. “Can you explain?” Sniggers precede and succeed the question. With that little question-and-snigger, neoliberal hegemony re-iterates its reach across the Atlantic Ocean to South Africa, by way of that island that formerly […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, News/Politics
Peeking under the line
By Aragorn Eloff Earlier this week I received a Facebook invite for an event that, noble as it seems, left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Here’s the invitation for “Live Under the Line“, an initiative by the religious organisation Common Good Foundation: “Did you know that there are currently 13 million South Africans […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Arab first lady’s burden
The woman, yet again, has become a political football in Middle-Eastern politics. One wishes the area experts would make up their minds: just yesterday we were being told the Muslim wife was a voiceless, pitiable creature walking five steps behind her husband … Now she’s an assistant secretary of state — directing and manipulating her […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A Philip K Dick nightmare
Even though an American is four times more likely to be killed by lightning, there’s no greater bogeyman in the Anglo-American body politic than the homicidal terrorist. It beggars belief that something so statistically insignificant (it has been suggested that the odds of death at the hands of a jihadist, or the like, is one-in-20 […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Coy Western maidens toy with Zulu culture
Positions Vacant Wanted: 30 000 dancers for an ensemble performance. Requirements: Applicants must be virgins, young and single, as well as willing to dance semi-nude. Remuneration: None. That’s not a classified advertisement likely to lure the modern woman. Indeed, for a dance director in Paris, London or even Salt Lake City, the challenge of finding 30 000 […]
Posted inNews/Politics
#KnowYourDA BEE pushes nothing new
I was snooping around the archives of the South African Institute of Race Relations during a visit earlier this year, particularly drawn to the boxes on the constitutional negotiations. One of these contained, among other things, the ANC’s position on a constitution for what would later become KwaZulu-Natal, academic and political discussions on federalism, and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mandela a symbol of social cohesion beyond black and white
What happened outside the private-owned Mediclinic in Arcadia, Pretoria, in the last six weeks that Nelson Mandela was in hospital was neither a make-believe kaleidoscope of non-racialism nor uncaring citizens trying to be what they are not. Rather, this monumental expression of solidarity, cooperation and interaction of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, trans-class and largely public display […]