Dear Mr Craven We are very different men, from very different generations, with very different views of the world. Nonetheless I respect both your opinion, and your contribution to the liberation struggle. But while I concede many of the points in your rather self-congratulatory letter to the ANC, I dispute many more. Not only are […]
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Posted inNews/Politics
Oh the identity question…
I am against everything Against war and those against War. Against whatever diminishes Th’individuals blind impulse Dambudzo Marechera, The Bar-Stool Edible Worm ——- The ever-lurking identity question, of which we are always aware, but not always attentive, has arisen once again. Indeed it is an entirely relevant one in the present political context demonstrated most […]
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Fiddling while Rome is burning …
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” — Karl Marx Both the intelligence and the ethical integrity of the human race are sadly lacking, as far as I can tell. Sure, there are many exceptions — millions, probably — but their numbers are vastly outweighed by […]
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The double lives of sports people
Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, arguably one of the most celebrated pieces of fiction in the Western world. War and Peace is a story, grossly simplified, about five aristocratic families and how Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, including the spectre of the invasion itself, goes about bringing change to the Tsarist society, which […]
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The language of God
By Steven Hussey Francis Collins, the lead scientist of the Human Genome Project, has in a recommendable book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief argued for rational harmony between science and faith. The “language” that he refers to is of course the human DNA sequence. But if you were expecting (as […]
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We’re not all Africans, we’re Jews!
When Sentletse threatened to respond to my post (“Africans are humans too“) I packed my bags in a state of panic and headed into the mountains, Cathedral Peak in the Central Drakensberg to be precise, to escape this particular “swart gevaar“. I had naturally revised my entire first week of 2011 because of my typical […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Nailing down Vampire Bob’s electoral coffin
Until the coffin is nailed shut, Zimbabweans will fear that Vampire Bob will find a way of rising from electoral death.
Posted inNews/Politics
A lecture on conjecture
Wow. South Africa is at it again. Apparently our beloved country of soothsayers has refined its general problem-solving skills for solving criminal investigations from their armchairs without any real facts or perspective to such a degree that our courts should just pack up shop and ask Judge Judy for a job. Granted, it’s hardly a […]
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The imagined threat of ‘die swart gevaar’
It is often difficult for human beings to readily discard particular views and prejudices that had long been imprinted in their minds through socialisation and experience. Often our worldview is informed by these particular conceptions, however preposterous they may be. People interpret facts before them according to their well-ingrained conceptions of what reality is and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Remapping Sudan
This Sunday’s referendum in South Sudan is a seriously big deal. I didn’t think it would happen. I thought it would go the way of the referendum in the Western Sahara, the one that should have taken place well over a decade ago but hasn’t, because the Moroccans are still afraid that they might lose. […]
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The year ahead for SMS
2011 is the year South African consumers become amongst the best protected in the world thanks to two important new laws. Far from seeing this as a threat, businesses should see this as a huge opportunity for improved customer communications, especially if they have SMS included in the mix. This is one of the main […]
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Panopticism, Facebook, the ‘information bomb’, and Wikileaks
In previous posts, I have argued that, at this stage, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which Facebook has succeeded in exposing users to more (potential, if not probable) attention from companies marketing commodities or services than they probably anticipated, have no more than financial or economic objectives, but that the potential for extensive social […]