Does the fact that children go to different schools, and that some go to college, while others attend university, have anything to do with the ostensibly irremediable class structure of societies? One’s intuitive response is likely to be in the affirmative, and it has been “scientifically” confirmed by none other than the famous French sociologist […]
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Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Nice to meet you, I’m on my period
There are many things that will make you stop and rethink who you follow on Twitter. Ignorance, bigotry, pictures of food for no particular reason, retweets of cats wearing hats or Vines of horses dancing to Kiswahili Christian music. Another thing is a soiled sanitary pad. One recently popped up on my timeline and my […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Give Rhodes to the artists
By Jordan Griffiths When I first heard of the #RhodesMustFall movement my response was simple, the statue must come down. For me it wasn’t even a question. I was privileged enough to have spent two years on the student council at the University of Pretoria (UP). I saw how aggressively transformation was fought at the […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Breaking out into the African institution: Rhodes University
By Nedine Moonsamy As a young postgraduate student I opted to study in India despite Darwinian warnings about the culture and academic institutions. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and rigour of Indian intellectual pursuits and soon became enamoured by the idiosyncrasies of their postcolonial academic culture. Unlike South Africa, Indian […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Sissy Cecil tests the mettle of university administrators
The statue of Cecil John Rhodes, 19th century Cape prime minister, southern African mining magnate, and British imperialist, is to be removed from its commanding position over the rugby fields of the University of Cape Town. In response to pressure from a small but effectively organised gang of students — who alternated the shock tactics […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Removing Rhodes’ statue would not ‘erase the past’
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” writes George Santayana. In the midst of the argument that the #RhodesMustFall campaign is fuelled by a misguided desire to “erase the past”, it seems to me that it is ironically, but precisely, this argument that is hampered by a deeply short-sighted approach […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
If Rhodes goes, Jesus Christ must go
Here’s an inconsequential bit of South African literary history. The late poet Professor Stephen Watson used to have me over to his little house on Rouwkoop Road in Rondebosch just across the road from the railway line. This was in the mid-Eighties. With the occasional roar of a passing train in the background we often […]
Posted inEquality, General, Health
Fighting TB with prisoners’ rights
By Annabel Raw Today is World Tuberculosis Day, commemorating the discovery of the cause of the disease in 1882. Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient disease with traces in human remains being recorded since antiquity. Despite advances in public health and treatment, today TB continues to claim over one and a half million lives every year, […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
We can no longer deny that #RhodesMustFall
A good seven or eight years ago, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, students arrived on campus one morning to find that the statue of Cecil John Rhodes had been defaced with red spray paint. The message read, “Fuck your dream of empire”. I don’t really recall what my reaction […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The national question in South Africa
It is not easy to ignore the national question in South Africa, particularly presently, both in the context of 20 years of democracy and also given the troubling discourse by certain seemingly regressive people and or institutions. It is also hard to overlook this paramount issue of the national question when one observes the socio-economic […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Memory and moving forward: #RhodesMustFall is not a shitty argument
If you do not like something, throw poop at it. This was the thinking of some protestors who called for the removal of the Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town campus citing that the continued presence of the statue was an ode to the white dominance of the past. The calls for the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What’s with the heavy-handed crackdown on free speech in Swaziland?
By Caroline James Remembering Thulani Maseko and Bheki Makhubu — one year on… Can you remember what you were doing 365 days ago? It was the day after St Patrick’s Day, so that might jog some memories, but for most of us, it was just another day. For Thulani Maseko, Bheki Makhubu and their families, […]