South Africa is increasingly failing to report to the UN international treaty monitoring bodies, prompting the UN Human Rights Committee to take the exceptional measure of reviewing South Africa in respect of its performance under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) without receiving an input from the government. It has not submitted […]
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Posted inGender violence
A deep dip in everyday racism/sexism/classism/etc
Cape Town swimming coach Tim Osrin was arrested last week when he allegedly beat up a middle-aged domestic worker, Cynthia Joni, in the middle of the day without the two ever having said anything to one another. Osrin was driving his car along a road, saw Joni, and stopped his car to beat her up. […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Two sides of a racist coin: White privilege and cadre deployment
The appointment of Lesetja Kganyago as governor of the South African Reserve Bank provides an excellent opportunity to examine both cadre deployment and white privilege. Race reductionists from both side of the racial divide confirmed the inherent problems with their thinking when the announcement was made: the white privileged types who bemoaned another cadre deployment […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Listen to immigrant stories
By Anthea Paelo An Eyewitness News’ headline caught my eye the other day, “Zim home affairs call deportations ‘inhumane’”. Being a foreign national myself, I’m drawn to news articles like this but with the careless disregard of a person confident of their legal status in the country. This changed one weekend last month. It was […]
Posted inGeneral, Health, News/Politics
Nuclear power carries risks that are simply not worth taking
In the wake of President Jacob Zuma’s recent lone ranger escapade to Russia, evidently to secure Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assistance regarding South Africa’s energy needs — the status of which seems to be uncertain at present because of accusations and denials of him acting unilaterally flying to and fro — the question, whether one […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Protecting the dignity of politicians
One thinks of politicians as vain and thick-skinned. Arrogant and shameless. Duplicitous bullies. People to tolerate but rarely to love. Men and women with the backbones of amoebae but the survival instincts of cockroaches. It appears one is just so wrong, for it seems that they bleed emotionally like any of us. All the way […]
Posted inEquality
Biko lives but transformation suffers
As we commemorate the brutal and barbaric killing of Stephen Bantu Biko this time of the year we are once again forced to reflect on where we are as a country against the ideals that Biko died for. South Africa is also marking 20 years of political independence. It is fitting, indeed, to ask and […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, Lifestyle
Commissioner Street: An experience of interwoven lives
It’s hard to describe some cities. Perhaps we try to give it an identity based on how it is commonly experienced. But Joburg is a very, very fragmented place – its parts just do not seem to sum up into any kind of cohesive whole. Most cities at least have a river that helps to […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Crunch time for educational publishers
It’s rare that a national industry is confronted with a single threat to its future. That just happened to South African publishing. A few days ago, the South African department of basic education (DBE) released a policy document, for public comment, that explains how the DBE would like to handle textbooks going forward. (If you’re […]
Posted inGeneral
Travels through Schizoville
On a recent trip to the Netherlands we had a first-hand experience of what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari mean when they claim that the typical “malady” of today is schizophrenia — what Ian Buchanan calls “an everyday schizophrenia in which the absurd is simply ‘how things are’ ”. Once you have been alerted to it, […]
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle
Tanaquil Le Clercq and the possibility of resurrection
“I’m not a dancer anymore, who am I?” – Jacques d’Amboise When prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq (1929-2000) played the part of a stricken polio victim in Resurgence (1944) when she was fifteen, little did she know that she was rehearsing her own sad fate. The biographical documentary Afternoon of a Faun (2013) tells the […]
Posted inEquality, Media, News/Politics
Leave Judge Masipa alone
I have little interest in the Oscar Pistorius trial. I empathise with the loss of, and damage to, life as a result of Pistorius’s actions. This case has, unfortunately, been given more attention than it should. The fact that the victim, and the accused, are well-known, white, moneyed, and privileged, has resulted in this case […]