The statement released by the African National Congress in respect of the granting of bail to ANC Northern Cape Chairperson John Block should be warmly welcomed. It is a document that every member of the African National Congress Youth League should read after their Northern Cape Youth League attacked National Prosecuting Authority head Menzi Simelane. […]
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Posted inGeneral
The threat to democracy
The other day a colleague asked me to present a proposal for him at a meeting because I supposedly was an “expert at democracy”. I demurred in the face of this description, but afterwards thought that I should have pointed out to him that the notion of an “expert in democracy” is a contradiction in […]
Posted inSport
Why are Rugby League players so dumb?
I know it is not right to judge sportsmen by their intellect, or their ability to string a sentence together. You’d never do the reverse to an astrophysicist. You’d never say: Einstein, genius, but awful ball skills. That would be stupid. But with all that said, one would like to hope that our sports heroes […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The sexy scale of SA politics
South African politicians aren’t sexy, yet I am slightly disturbed by utterances from some politico circles that politics should be sexy. Sure, it makes sense: sex sells. But considering our socio-economic climate, it appears as if South Africans just aren’t buying. No individual politician from the crop of leaders the 2009 elections produced — in […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Caught in a web of idiocy
‘Just murmur ‘Thank God for Darwin,’ as another wide-eyed innocent provides banking details to a crime syndicate or chooses carrot juice above chemotherapy.’
Posted inGeneral
SA News? Best thriller read on the planet, but…
I love following SA news. The kiwi stuff is lukewarm potty water compared to the fiery mampoer of the SA film scripts that get dished out every week. Yes, they’re potential film scripts: from the shenanigans of Julius Seizure to the recent, apparent uncovering of the first democratic election in 1994 being rigged in places […]
Posted inGeneral
Cuban market reforms signal the death of communism
As the global economy slowly emerges from the rubble of the devastating 2008 financial crisis, developed and developing economies are beginning to review their macro-economic policies in a collective attempt to spur sustainable global economic growth and avert a similar crisis. The US has been largely to blame for initiating a crisis that caused global […]
Posted inGeneral
Open letter to President Jacob Zuma
By Lee Hall Mr President, you state that “ … this right [media freedom] cannot not be allowed to enjoy greater protection than [other freedoms] enshrined in the Constitution”. Strangely enough, it is not so much “media freedom” that is under threat here. Rather, it is my constitutional right to choose freely what information I […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Still much to be done to persuade the ANC on press self-regulation
The ANC has different views on the press, many of which do not tally
Posted inNews/Politics
Drowning in the incompetence of water affairs
Astonishingly, after a few token squeaks of protest, the opposition Democratic Alliance meekly accepted the minister’s decision.
Posted inNews/Politics
Why Liu Xiaobo shouldn’t have been awarded the Nobel
Last week in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Thorbjorn Jagland, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, defended the awarding of the Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Asserting that “international human-rights law and standards are above the nation-state”, that “ideas of sovereignty have changed over time” and that “the world” has […]
Posted inGeneral
SMS improves communications for deaf
Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the east coast of the US, had 20 times more deaf inhabitants for its population size than the rest of the country. But the islanders didn’t consider this hereditary deafness a disability because the entire community, both hearing and deaf, were […]