Much has been said, is still being said and will continue to be said about the reconstitution of the South African legal, political and, perhaps most importantly, ethical order on the basis of the ideal of human dignity. This reconstitution of course took place and form by way of the adoption of the post-apartheid Constitutions […]
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Posted inEquality, Gender violence
How not to pick up women in SA
Written with Rethabile Mashale* City Press ran a story on December 22 by Charl du Plessis titled “The art of picking up women in SA”. The article on Pick Up Artist SA’s boot camp on picking up women is about “the secret psychological techniques that will help [men and lesbian women] get lucky with South […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Living in present-day South Africa
I don’t believe in generalisations when it comes to experience, except in the natural sciences. In fact, philosopher Hans Reichenbach, in The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, goes so far as to claim that “generalisation” is what is distinctive about science – in the language of the philosophy of science, it is science’s “demarcation criterion”. Because […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Mandela’s lesson of reconciliation applies to gender divides
As a society on a long walk to making reconciliation a reality, we have already taken significant and decisive strides. Yet, everyday in South Africa is still marked by violence, particularly that of a gendered nature. Today, I offer some reflections on how we might bring reconciliation closer in our everyday experience of being and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Plotting the parameters of genocide – the SACP and Zuma booing
The ancient Chinese thinker Confucius is reputed to have said: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.” At the risk of inviting the vitriol that attracts calling things by their proper names, I will testify, hopefully not in a kangaroo court, that the SACP’s statement of December 11 2013 which […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lessons in speechwriting: Obama on Madiba
By Rob Turrell I listened to Barack Obama’s speech about Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium last Tuesday week in awe. I had read his tribute on Mandela’s death and I wondered if he would repeat it or give a new speech. He gave a new speech. I was amazed. I’ll tell you why. Rhetorically speaking […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What the fake signing man really told us
Gibberish or not, what the fake signing man so pithily exposed about our society, is that white privilege and commonsense racism continue to permeate and dominate the South African public conversation. This was evident in the many educated and colloquial responses to this debacle which, rather than focusing on the grave disservice done to the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The danger of making Mandela apolitical
By Nhlanhla Mtaka It is true, nature has the capacity to force us humans to act. This was evident the day former president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died. On that day the message from Mother Nature seems to be clear: stop individualising the multiple and avoid the trap of making Mandela apolitical. Mandela died on December […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Nelson, nostalgia and the nation
By Nedine Moonsamy In South Africa, we’ve never had an easy time with nostalgia. For some citizens being nostalgic about the past is often tied to the guilt of a privileged, white childhood. For others it holds the concern about whether nostalgia glamorises the indignity of poverty under apartheid. In both cases we censor our […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mandela’s death exposes white opportunism
For the past two weeks, the nation has been mourning the death of its first democratically elected president and one of the most respected global icons, Nelson Mandela, a man fondly referred to as Tata, father of the nation. The grief that penetrates the atmosphere, like a coiling miasma, has suffocated the life out of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The myth of Mandela the violent liberation war hero
There was never a time when people have spent so much time and energy to reclaim what they think is the correct brand or label of Nelson Mandela — to redefine and project him as a revolutionary fighter. Their efforts are to shatter what they consider the myth of portraying him as a saint or […]
Posted inNews/Politics
You can represent Mandela in his absence
By Amukelani Mayimele This is one of those days where society is watching everything we say about Nelson Mandela. We are almost challenged to sound politically correct in our writing and in our sharing of memories of Madiba. Many have succumbed to the pressure and society’s dictatorship on how we should react and think about […]