An open-and-shut letter to Buti Manamela Dear Comrade Buti, The Young so-called Communist League is battling to remain relevant. I am making this bold statement because I know that though you may disagree with it you will understand it perfectly. Two years ago I wrote with appreciation for the work that your organisation was doing […]
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Posted inLifestyle
Emigration and being in limbo
Being an emigrant means always being in a state of limbo. When you’re planning to emigrate, you’re not really here. You put off purchasing a house; the car you buy must be something you can get rid of quickly. Everything is a matter of “when the visa comes through” or “when we move to xyz”. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What have the bloody savages done now?
There’s a scene in the 1995 Jock of the Bushveld* film that has been seared into my memory. A messenger comes running up to the governor of the Cape and says, “News of Shaka, sir!” The governor then says, “What’s the bloody savage done now?” When I first heard of the interdict against umkhosi wokweshwama […]
Posted inGeneral
Ukweshwama: What is all this bull?
The Scramble for Africa which began in the 1880s has been largely blamed for disrupting and eroding the cultural practices and traditions of Africans. Africans have maintained that colonialism and imperialism served to entrench Western values while undermining their way of life. The rise of African nationalism since the end of colonisation imbued those who […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Simelane’s rule of law
At a press conference to explain his response to the Ginwala Commission, a journalist asked then-president Kgalema Motlanthe to elaborate on what he meant by referring the matter of the director-general of the department of justice and constitutional development, Menzi Simelane, to the minister “in accordance with the law”. Simelane had, according to the Ginwala […]
Posted inGender violence
The odds are stacked against men
The odds are stacked against men. There are about 750 million sperm per ejaculate, yet only one sperm can fertilise the single egg a woman produces once a month. A male foetus is less likely to survive full-term pregnancy than a female, and boys are more likely to die in infancy. Boys are more likely to […]
Posted inLifestyle
Sometimes culture is a load of bull
There are two main points that really get my goat about the current Ukweshwama debacle (Ukweshwama, for those who don’t know, is a traditional Zulu ceremony involving the ritualistic slaying of a bull). The first is the unbridled cruelty to the animal involved, and the second is the most widely used justification for the ritual’s […]
Posted inGeneral
How do you extract a birth certificate from an extinct country (Zim)?
Before getting into this blog, it would be appreciated if any reader can give me a practical answer or solution to the question posed in my blog title above and a quick solution (less than six months processing) for the unabridged South African birth certificate. Seriously. Including a Zimbabwean unabridged birth certificate. Dictionaries define “country” […]
Posted inGeneral
Extra, extra! Screwing Indians wholesale
I have had it with Indian businesses. Sure, half of them are my cousins and all that, but even shared bloodlines and Sunday Akhni doesn’t make shitty service and bigoted operations okay. We all talk about how big ol’ Telkom, SABC, Eskom and SAA rip us off, but no one writes about “the Indian business” […]
Posted inGeneral
Culture schmulture — some things are just wrong
The Zulu practice of Ukweshwama is violent and inhumane. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the comments around this practice this is what happens: Witnesses to the ritual describe the scene where a bull is released into a group of men, whose duty it then is to slay the animal. However, this is […]
Posted inGeneral
ANC-Cosatu rift widens
Just when South Africans thought that rifts within the alliance were a thing of the past post-Zuma versus Mbeki, along comes the next big one. This time it is Cosatu taking on what it considers to be the anti-left elements within the ANC. If regard is had to the Reuters article (click on link) then […]
Posted inMedia
So I bought a man this weekend
This is not something I’ve done before, mind you. I bought him on Saturday afternoon, for R550, and what an interesting experience it was. I felt like, all empowered and stuff, expressing the power my corporate salary confers upon me and using it to turn stereotypes on their head, yadda yadda, and all in the […]