A lot has been written speculatively about American presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s popularity, which has seemed surprising to many if his outrageous statements about women or about Mexicans are taken into account. Until recently when he did an egg-dance on the question of women and abortion, trying to correct what he had suddenly realised had […]
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Posted inGeneral
The state of apartness (Khaya Dlanga’s To Quote Myself, part II)
There is something about well-written childhood stories that can heal. They crackle with the marvel of being alive. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote about the magical act of writing: “The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible.” Children, and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Al-Bashir ruling: Will SA do the right thing?
By Angela Mudukuti There have been many significant developments in the world of international criminal justice recently. Last week the International Criminal Court confirmed charges against Ugandan Dominic Ongwen, recorded a guilty plea from Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi and convicted the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo. The International […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
There’s no dignity in education without proper sanitation
By Chandni Gopal and Zandile Ngubeni Human Rights month serves a dual purpose; we are reminded of the sacrifices that accompanied the struggle for the attainment of democracy in South Africa but are also afforded the opportunity to reflect on progress made in the promotion and protection of our hard-earned human rights. With this year […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
How to avoid an economic war
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India said “Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Nehru led a nation of hundreds of millions of poor Indians groaning under the postcolonial legacies that had shaped the subcontinent. Colonialism was not […]
Posted inEnvironment, Lifestyle
Transport, an existential question
We spend a large portion of our lives moving about, a significant percentage of our income too, and it directly affects the future of our planet. So how come we don’t think of transportation as a fundamental life issue in the same way we consider our personal health, financial stability and self-realisation? More than 17% […]
Posted inNews/Politics
It’s not about capture but control
Catchphrases quickly move from being nifty idioms that ignite thought to clichés that stifle it. Such is the likely fate of “state capture”, a phrase that features in virtually every media account of President Jacob Zuma’s controversial relationship with the Gupta family. But what has been happening in the past weeks is not about state […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News/Politics
Alternatives to coal-fired electricity exist but there are no alternatives for water
By Penny-Jane Cooke The last quarter of 2015 saw five out of the nine provinces — KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West, including the breadbasket of the country, the Free State — declared as water disaster areas and by extension disaster areas for agriculture. Somehow, the linkages between how the intensive water use for coal-fired […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Foucault and the courage of truth
The last course that Michel Foucault presented at the Collége de France in 1984, when he was already quite weak (he died in June of that year, and taught until March), was on The Courage of Truth – later published with that title (Palgrave Macmillan 2011; Kindle edition). Although I cannot do justice to it […]
Posted inSport
A blueprint for South African football
By Dhirshan Gobind Bafana Bafana’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers resume at the end of March against mighty Cameroon and it is indeed time to take a look at how the team can turn the tide, climb the world rankings and qualify for big tournaments again. It is fairly obvious that there needs to be […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
The art of hypocrisy: Appeal to re-constitute Shackville
By Shobane A wave of condemnations and outrage hit the media after University of Cape Town artworks were burnt on campus. Even those academics, who from the rooftops declared their support for the fees must fall movement were very quick to distance themselves from what they saw as a particularly “senseless” act. This violence, it […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protests herald the emergence of new democratic subjectivities
We are in Valletta, Malta, at a conference at present, and I have just done a presentation on the reasons for the widespread nihilism in the world today. What struck me was the fact that a number of the other delegates who came to me afterwards to talk to me about my presentation expressed their […]