Some say the ANC’s annual January statement read out by the president on Saturday was long and boring. What kind of assessment is that? Where were these people when brother Moammar Gadaffi caused his own interpreter to collapse with exhaustion after speaking for 94 minutes at the UN last September? And what about the young […]
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Posted inGeneral
Cope must be the change it wants to see in society
Enough has been said about how the first year of Cope’s existence has been a rough ride characterised by a mix of leadership difficulties as well as a sense of disorganisation at both administrative, strategic and policy levels. So how should Cope fix these obvious impediments that have made its founding year an overall disappointment […]
Posted inGeneral
A multifaceted mirror for individuals (2)
In my previous post, I reconstructed Kierkegaard’s aesthetic model for existence briefly, pointing out the implications this way of living has for human relationships and for one’s sense of identity. This is not unproblematic, of course. Hence the rejoinder, on Kierkegaard’s part, to the implicit claims made by the pseudonymous A in praise of the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Doctor, doctor
By T Osiame Molefe Hello…my name is Osiame and I am a self-diagnosed chronic cyberchondriac. *Pause for group reply* It has been a day since I googled my last set of symptoms. Needless to say, despite the radiating headache and short-term memory loss, I discovered that I do not suffer from encephalitis as I self-diagnosed. […]
Posted inMedia
How do they cope without ‘takkies’ and ‘kak’?
“The Guardian reported that J & Mrs Z ‘had matching white trainers’,” observed Gus Silber, reflecting on the Jacob Zuma marriage saga, “which confused me until I realised they meant shoes”. Happening across this comment on Twitter, I realised that there are people in the world who do not have access to a word like […]
Posted inLifestyle
Do you have a favourite toilet?
The number of page hits that certain blog posts get on this website would suggest that Thought Leader readers like to read about the government, politics and how everything is going wrong, wrong, wrong with the ANC. You, the reader, want to discuss Zuma, Malema and those okes. Well, terribly sorry to disappoint. This isn’t […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The war on counterfeit drugs
By Franklin Cudjoe and Julian Harris Deadly new mutations of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis threaten over half the world’s population, the World Health Organisation and the Gates Foundation warned recently. One major culprit is counterfeit and substandard drugs that can provoke mutations that resist real medicines. Crackdowns, however, do not address the cause. […]
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No new light, just recycled trash: Anthea Jeffery’s People’s War
Anthea Jeffery commits 634 pages to a study of the “people’s war” in the South African context in an attempt to debunk what she claims to be a false conception of how the ANC gained power, the nature of the political violence that characterised South Africa from the 1980s up to 1994, and a special […]
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Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit… Nativity as we’ve never seen it.
It took a very special kind of mind to conjure up the idea of introducing a scatological theme into the nativity scene. Somewhere, sometime in the distant past, an anonymous Spaniard said to his mates, “I know how to brighten up our display. Let’s put the queen around the side of the stable.” Somebody else […]
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The sadness Christmas can sometimes bring
I was lying on a bed in a physiotherapist’s ward in Randburg with an ankle injury and listened to an elderly female voice querying another woman: ‘So what are you doing for Easter?’ I had seen the two slowly hobbling into the ward and they were definitely old hands at being “senior citizens”. “Oh… I […]
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A cinematic treasure: Reggio’s Qatsi-trilogy
I know, I know. I’m on about film again. It’s sort of inevitable, if one happens to be sharing some of one’s film treasures on DVD with one’s friends in an intimate holiday atmosphere, and in a place as beautiful as the little village of Greyton into the bargain. Here, exploring the indescribably majestic mountains […]
Posted inGeneral
It’s been a nauseating year
South Africans are an intolerant bunch of people who often look down on others and themselves. Take the stupid political rally that the welcome of hero Caster Semenya was turned into by Julius Malema earlier this year — only to find that our own Pinocchio Leornard Chuene was the fool making us all look like […]