Thought Leader

Walls and razor wire, or acceptance of different others?

12 November 2019 Bert Olivier

Two days ago, November 9 2019, marked 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the irony has not escaped some people, that today one witnesses walls going up again everywhere. Nick Miller, in the Sydney Morning Herald (November 2 2019), for example, writes: Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, pulling the…

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Tasty, very tasty, indeed

31 October 2019 Avishkar Govender

Many years ago, while still involved with student politics, I tasted Lipton Ice Tea, the lemon flavour, for the first time. I immediately asked, “Is this available in peach flavour, and is this available in mango flavour?”. I was told that the peach flavour would be released soon. Immediately thereafter, I was asked what I…

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South Africans should stop thinking in terms of race

27 October 2019 Bert Olivier

It was with a heavy heart that I read the news, first, of Herman Mashaba’s resignation from the position of mayor of Johannesburg and from the Democratic Alliance (DA), and soon afterwards of that of both Mmusi Maimane (leader) and Athol Trollip (chairman) from their respective leadership positions in the DA, and from the party…

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Choose me!

27 October 2019 Avishkar Govender

The Chairwoman Federal Council and Federal Executive Democratic Alliance DA Federal Head Office Website: da.org.za E-Mail: [email protected] Telephone: +27 (0) 21 465 1431 Theba Hosken House 16 Mill Street Gardens Cape Town Democratic Alliance Federal Head Office P.O. Box 1475 Cape Town 8000 Dear Ma’am My best wishes and congratulations to your good-self, on the…

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Inflaming emotions is art’s job

27 October 2019 Kerushun Pillay

There has been serious outrage which has greeted an art exhibition which appears to mock Christianity at a KwaZulu-Natal school. A pastor in a video circulated on social media labelled the exhibition “demonic”, arguing that the paintings, some of which show cartoon paintings of Jesus Christ alongside a McDonald’s mascot, degraded Christianity. Other pieces of…

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An Invitation

21 October 2019 Avishkar Govender

Recently, I decided that I wanted to hold a conference to define a new vision for South Africa. The premise being that the old vision for South Africa, which was defined between 1987 and 1996, has in fact failed. I intended to invite every political party registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (and you can…

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Criminality of the brutal variety

10 October 2019 Bert Olivier

By the term, ‘criminality’, I don’t simply mean the perpetration of crime, or criminal acts; I have in mind something far more fundamental, even primal, in the sense of that which remains behind when criminologists, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists have exhausted all avenues of causal explanation when it comes to the ‘grounds’ or causal antecedents…

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