The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015. They were adopted in September 2000 through the Millennium Declaration at the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly, convened as the Millennium Assembly. The MDGs, understood to be a global development agenda, focused on poverty reduction, access to education, gender parity, healthcare access, sustainable development […]
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Posted inEquality, Gender violence
‘I am penis, hear me roar’: The threat of lesbianism
Men seem to labour under the misapprehension that sex is about them. This is not a hastily made statement, there is some evidence behind it. Exhibit A: The idea that men think they’re “putting the D” to or “giving it” to someone. The rhetoric gives the impression that the rest of us come to the […]
Posted inTech
The business of cyberwar
Most “connected” people will probably have noticed the symptoms of what is really a war going on right under our noses, even if one does not really put two and two together as far as the bellicose nature of these symptoms goes. I am not only talking about what ends up, mostly, in our spam […]
Posted inGeneral
Judge Dennis Davis schools us in book reviewing
Judge Dennis Davis sent shockwaves through the South African literary community recently with his review of Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story by Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman. Davis has contributed that rare thing to our local literary scene — the negative book review. It was not only negative, but excoriating. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The river runs dry: Gender equality in South Africa
In 1789 France’s Ancien Regime, its monarchy and traditions, were swept away by the tide of the French Revolution — only for these laws and customs to reappear some years later. Struck by this, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that it was as if a river had plunged underground and resurfaced a distance away, the river […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality
The death of international development
International development is dying; people just don’t buy it anymore. The West has been engaged in the project for more than six decades now, but the number of poor people in the world is growing, not shrinking, and inequality between rich and poor continues to widen instead of narrow. People know this, and they are […]
Posted inGeneral
Ethics always comes too late for power
If there is one lesson I have learned from Foucault, it is this: Ethics always comes too late for power. What I mean by this is that human beings – even philosophers – have a tendency to rationalise, in ethical or moral terms, about the actual decisions and choices one makes in the world, and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Order, order: A parliamentary mess
The events that occurred in Parliament last week have generated a significant amount of debate in South Africa. And for good reason. Police entered the Chamber in 1966 when an apartheid-era prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was assassinated on the floor of the House by a messenger in the Old Assembly. No one died last week. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Humpty Cosatu’s fall is the best news in a long time
The Humpty Dumpty of South African trade unionism has fallen off the wall. And all Emperor Zuma’s horses and all Emperor Zuma’s men never will put Humpty together again. Callooh, callay, oh frabjous day! On balance, the exit of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) from union federation Cosatu is a damn […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are? You who drive in the emergency lane, you who turn right from the far left, you who crawl at 60km/h in the fast lane. Who do you think you are? You who speed through orange and red, you who ignore solid white lines, you who stop anywhere you like. […]
Posted inEquality
‘Africans are so simple,’ he said
By Rachel Nyaradzo Adams Not long ago I was in a lobby in a Ghana hotel and overheard a western-sounding white male utter the following assessment to a listener on his phone: “The people in Africa are so simple, I can do whatever I like here. They never challenge me” (paraphrased). Stunned but not surprised […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Media, News/Politics
Numsa: Is this the left’s moment?
The announcement that Numsa would form its own socialist party should come as no surprise. Numsa’s battles within Cosatu (most notably with its historical rival, the Jacob Zuma-aligned NUM) and the ruling alliance (particularly with the Zuma faction, ostensibly on questions of ideology) have served as a generous forewarning that this was coming. Further, in […]