In certain circles I could suggest, “the real problems of the world are those caused by white masculine capitalist hegemony!” I might get a few heads to nod. I could then assert, “Down with white power! Whiteness must fall!” In the right circles this may well get me some applause. There would be others, however, […]
Search results
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Decolonisation and the end of white male hegemony
Western civilisation has, since the dawn of patriarchy, privileged white masculine reasoning and meanings and depreciated the experience, knowledge and voices of women. With the advent of colonialism people indigenous to the Americas, Africa and other colonised lands, were also brutally constructed as less than human, “othered” and devalued by this monolithic white masculinist logic. […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality
South African women should fight for 100% renewable energy
By Yvette Abrahams South African women should be fighting for a 100% renewable energy future for our country. A completely renewable energy future will be good for everyone, but it could be particularly good for women. At the recent South African International Renewable Energy Conference in Cape Town, it was striking that one of the […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
On whiteness and white guilt
There is a refrain that is often heard around the braai or the water cooler, and it goes like this: “Why should I have to apologise for apartheid? I wasn’t a part of it/was only a child/wasn’t yet born.” There is another one that I’ve been seeing more often lately, on Facebook and in thinkpieces, […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Derrida and the present world (dis-)order
Anyone who believes that the present world-dispensation is one of “order”, merely has to scan all the many sources of information to be disabused of such an illusion. In doing so, however, they would probably not realise that, as Derrida (1994; see below) enables one to see, these very news sources — mainly television, the […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle, News/Politics
‘Don’t you want to be white?’
By Lorato Palesa Modongo “Coming to a new country always forces you to confront things about yourself that you never considered before.” — Staceyann Chin, poet. I am from Botswana. Literally next door. I came to South Africa in 2013 to take up postgraduate studies at Stellenbosch University. I had three reasons. Firstly, psychology is […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Could compulsory UKZN laptops be a game-changer?
On May 7 this year Renuka Vithal, University of KwaZulu-Natal’s deputy vice-chancellor of teaching and learning, sent out an internal email indicating that the university would be adopting Moodle as its on-line learning management system. All disciplines would be required to place first and second-year module material online. And first and second-year students would need […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Stop invoking Mandela’s legacy to advocate respectability
Recently, I saw a Facebook post about an event where the keynote speech was titled “What would Mandela do?” The speech, unsurprisingly, criticised the recent student protests. For the love of intellectual discourse, can we please retire this phrase? Don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing but respect and admiration — and gratitude — for Nelson […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
#NationalShutDown: Lessons from 1989 Tiananmen Square
I watched the evening news bulletin reporting how this current incarnation of the #FeesMustFall movement had spread to Fort Hare. I watched Fort Hare students, like students at other campuses, burn all manner of property. But what was odd in all that burning at Fort Hare, was the students throwing toilet paper all over the […]
Posted inGender violence
Yes means yes, lessons from affirmed consent
Freshmen (first-year university students) across the US are in the middle of what is known as “the red zone” — a period of time in which an especially high number of incidences of sexual violence are reported on college campuses. It is during this period that US universities typically engage in numerous awareness campaigns that […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Beauty is neither noble nor obligatory
It is generally understood that beauty is to be desired, it is desirable because it is inherently good. When asked to describe beauty, it is difficult to do so in terms that are divorced from concrete experience. Philosophers have argued about it for millennia. Feminists have tried to reclaim beauty by rebranding it, in this […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Brics in crisis and new middle classes will bear the greatest costs
By Jan Hofmeyr These are trying times for Brazil and South Africa, the southern members of the Brics grouping of emerging nations that also include China, Russia and India. After years of robust growth their economies are in the doldrums, and their governments lack latitude in the options to revive them. It is not only […]