Forgive me for only waking up to this now. I’ve been away in a place where it was hard to find a 3G signal, so missed the opportunity to spend the tail end of the festive season arguing about the same thing we argue about the rest of the year, the incurable condition known as […]
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Posted inNews/Politics
India: Rape, uproar…silence
By Ashish Sewgoolam Sexual harassment is so much the norm in India that foreigners are warned by travel agents to travel in groups and with a male if possible to deter local men from making advances or lewd comments. I would usually brush this off as Western exaggeration but I’ve seen it happen live, and […]
Posted inLifestyle
Has the end of the world been rescheduled?
I must admit I was one of the millions of naïve people worldwide who was duped by the Mayan’s so-called “end of the world” prophecy. Not only duped, but my marriage was almost destroyed. From December 20 2012 right through to the 23, I insisted on sleeping alone on the sofa in our lounge. I […]
Posted inGeneral
Update on attempt by MMU to suspend Ian Parker (2)
Here is the rest of the account regarding events surrounding Ian Parker at MMU in the UK: “The worst outcome for the neoliberal university is that it fails to persuade its staff that anyone who complains has a problem, and MMU has done its level best to make it seem that the problem here was […]
Posted inLifestyle
An inconvenient truth…animal cruelty is forever
By Steven Hussey There are few topics as emotive as animal abuse. The daily evidence I can see of this is no farther than on my Facebook wall, with people calling for the senseless nuclear obliteration of China in support of some powerless petition to stop animal cruelty in rural areas there, of dogs in […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why do we care about Americans and their guns?
Another day, another mass shooting by a disaffected young man with access to an awful lot of firepower. They seem to happen with depressing regularity in America these days. Naturally, South Africans on Twitter had plenty to say about events in Newtown, and I was no exception (sensing that words become meaningless after a while, […]
Posted inGeneral
Unpacking the discourse of domination
Over this past year I have written a series of essays that attempt to deconstruct the “discourse of domination” and have provided the links to these articles in this piece. These essays were written in response to a series of racialised events that happened in South Africa in 2012 — occurrences, which I posit, are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A triumphant year for the judiciary
The man who casts himself proudly as “100% Zulu boy” is set for a victory worthy of the Zulu hero, King Shaka. This weekend President Jacob Zuma will vanquish all at the African National Congress’ leadership contest, with his formidable impi. The size of the KwaZulu-Natal of delegation to Mangaung should easily ensure that the […]
Posted inGeneral
Musing on music
“Korean flamenco” might appear to be an oxymoron, and in a sense it is. After all, flamenco is as Spanish as one can get in the realm of music … and indigenous Korean music is nothing like it. But last night we – the delegates to a conference on English literature organised by the English […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I know whiteness through and through
Racism is alive and living in the confines of the whiteness construct. This year alone has thrown up many local and global racist incidents that prove that we are a long way off from a post-racist society. It seems to me that whiteness is losing the plot and in serious need of deconstruction — hence […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Are we a chronically distracted society?
How often do you have a completely uninterrupted space where you can just sit and think, pondering life’s mysteries in silence? Personally, I lack enough creative pauses. My cellphone, like a battery-powered limb, relentlessly entices me with its flashing red light. A chance for quiet serenity exists only in my dreams. Scott Belksy, author of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The unbearable ‘rightness’ of whiteness
By Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende There has been a robust discussion on the issue of white privilege in the world and in South Africa in the last few days on Facebook and I am relieved to see that finally people can have these discussions and express their views without the whole exercise degenerating into an e-blood bath. […]