By Robtel Neajai Pailey Late last week, I was informed that I would not be able to travel to Dubai for an important meeting scheduled months ago. Like other countries across the globe, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) halted travel for those with Guinean, Liberian, and Sierra Leonean passports during the height of the Ebola […]
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Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Statues will fall: A critique of four newspaper columns
The Sunday Tribune carried four articles on April 12, 2015 analysing the Rhodes Must Fall debate in the context of transformation in general. Thank goodness for Shose Kessi’s brilliant analysis that saved those pages from being completely out of touch with activist sentiment on the ground. I want to unpack the complexities that each writer […]
Posted inEnvironment, General
Anticipating reality – Peter F Hamilton’s Fallen Dragon
Although the title of Peter F Hamilton’s Fallen Dragon (Pan Books, 2001) creates the impression that it belongs to the fantasy genre (not really my cup of tea), one soon learns that you are dealing with science fiction. And you know that you are dealing with a master of science fiction when many of the […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Why is civil society power still located in the global north?
By Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah and Mandeep Tiwana Almost everywhere we look — from economics to demography to air travel to innovation — the shift to the so-called “emerging” markets is palpable. But when it comes to the civil society landscape, the transformation is much less visible. While some high-profile human rights organisations are decentralising (eg Amnesty […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
‘Art is for everyone, because art is in everyone’
One of the beautiful things about a big city is its simple ability to give audience to the things that are happening in the wider world of the rest of the country. And so it was that I attended a book launch about an art gallery in the Northern Cape that was doing unusual and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
E-tolls: An ANC act of rare political courage
There is a slowly dawning realisation on the part of the African National Congress government that South Africa is staring down the fiscal abyss. The situation is dire. There are at least four public agencies — electricity supplier Eskom, SA National Roads Agency (Sanral), South African Airways (SAA), and the SA Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) — […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Something’s fishy in the state of Sanral
Call SA’s national ANC government nothing but determined! In the face of widespread opposition against the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) and e-tolling, even from the ANC’s own Gauteng legislature, Cyril Ramaphosa has come up with a “rescue plan”. The details of this plan have seen the expected opposition from Outa (Opposition to Urban […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Verwoerdgate: A different take on Alistair’s faux pas
Alistair Sparks undoubtedly put his foot in it by referring, in the context of praising Helen Zille, to Hendrik Verwoerd as a “smart” politician. Whether he likes it or not, lumping the two together, as well as including him in a list of otherwise progressively inclined white parliamentarians from the apartheid era, to some degree […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Black consciousness and Nazism, really?
After two days following the postings generated by Thorne Godhino’s article, “With friends like these, does black consciousness need enemies?”, I feel I must now confess to an unfulfilled anticipation on my part that someone (why not me I am not sure) would make a particular intervention in this important conversation. Before I get to […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Ethics of poetic ethnicities
By David wa Maahlamela How I wish I could, like many, pretend that the ethics of poetry are engraved on a rock somewhere at the centre of the global village — an assumption that downplays the fact that one’s domicile, environment and experience directly informs his literary outlook. The poetry landscape in South Africa is […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
South Africa’s Weimar moment?
What motivates a young black student leader — and we’re not talking here of a self-hating Uncle Tom-like figure but of one well to the left of Malcolm X — to fulsomely declare his admiration for Adolf Hitler? It is surely common knowledge that extreme anti-black racism was an inextricable part of the Nazi ideology. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How to eradicate extremism
By Dan Kuwali Extremism and radicalisation have fuelled violence and terrorism, which are some of the burning problems that affect communities around the world today. Countering these scourges is in the interest of all states, considering the borderless effects of such criminal acts. An extremist is a person who advocates or resorts to measures beyond […]