There is a real South Africa. There is a fictional South Africa. Perhaps there is one in-between. This is a country, not a nation as Christine Qunta persuasively argues in her new book, which got its political independence – not real freedom – 22 years ago. Until the latest and newest African country – South […]
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Posted inNews/Politics
Mugabe’s only path to true statesmanship is his death
Robert Mugabe came to power as president of Zimbabwe in 1987. Next year, if Southern Africa’s Methuselah lives until then, will mark his thirtieth year in office and what has become a pathetic downward spiral into the abuse of state power and the obliteration of his nation’s fortunes. President Mugabe is famed as having said […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, General
Ubuntu and eco-feminism as an antidote to neoliberalism
How many people have noticed that neoliberal capitalism undermines the values of ubuntu (“I am because others are”) as a traditional African practice? And how many know that ubuntu and ecofeminism share some fundamental principles and values? I know of at least one such person, and her work in this regard is extremely significant. In […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
#AndreOlivier: A world where white people took nothing from black people is not a real world, it’s an imagined one
By Sheena Jonker A South Africa where white people gained the position in society that they occupy and the place in the economy that they enjoy through sheer hard work, is an imagined South Africa. It’s not real. When Pastor Andre Olivier says “We (white people) took nothing from black people” he was accessing this […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The Tshwane protests, Freud and how to control a crowd
It is regrettable that so many thinking people today – even those in the discipline of psychology – regard the work of the founder of psychoanalysis (which is by no means synonymous with psychology) as being of no more than historical importance, and Sigmund Freud himself as a historical curiosity. And yet, Freud is more […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Didiza of Tshwane: The face that launched a riot
#TshwaneUnrest. That’s the hashtag that South African twitter chose to bookmark the biggest, most sustained public violence in the 22 years since the advent of democracy. Unrest? It seems that there’s nothing like a well-worn euphemism to make one feel snug and safe in suburbia, while in Pretoria’s townships rioters loot and burn. Two dozen […]
Posted inGeneral, Tech
Anthro-pessimism, robots and Garland’s ‘Ex Machina’
What does the demonstrable pessimism regarding robots and their projected “attitude” towards humans in recent science fictional films tell us about our understanding (or perhaps imagining) of artificial intelligence? To be sure, let me state at the outset there are exceptions to this, even in some of the most pessimistic instances of such films – […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Balance of power contests are driving violent community protests
As a society we must all resist and reject the temptation to accept that the violent protests and political killings that seem to occur all the time during the local election years is the new normal. It should not be! The time has come to take responsibility, show leadership and engage through all our stakeholder […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Brexit: Should ‘ordinary people’ be taking a decision as big as this?
By Abigail McDougall Between last night and this morning an “I’m in for Britain” poster popped up in the window of my upper-middle-class neighbours. This display of support for Remain is rather gutsy for Kenilworth, Warwickshire, where Leave posters are in many windows and I’ve had Leave propaganda raining through my mailbox for weeks. It […]
Posted inLifestyle
Should women simply put down a towel during their period and have sex?
Full disclosure: My period has been whack in 2016. It’s been a gauge for stress levels, fitness and how much I’m liking what is happening on the news. Basically it’s been a mess. Further full disclosure: During a particularly stressful work time I had my period for three weeks. Let that sink in. Three weeks. […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Black economic empowerment is not black economic empowerment
By Michael Nassen Smith The BEE drum has been beaten many times before on both the right and the left on South Africa’s political spectrum. A recent piece on PoliticsWeb penned by John Kane-Berman gave what has become a standard liberal right critique of BEE. I think Berman is right to bemoan the influence of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The investigation into the ‘dangerous’ Mr Trollip
Economic desperation is never far below the surface in a country where unemployment, depending on how it is defined, is nudging remorselessly towards 40%. Like hunger in a predator, desperation defines the lives of the estimated 9 million looking for work. It causes teachers to kill rivals in competition for jobs being illegally auctioned off by […]