Just when we need it most, hope has burst on to the South African scene in the form of the sunshine start of the 2008 rugby season. While our politicians are indubitably the scum of the earth, a malignant, avaricious cANCer and the archetypal kakistocracy, and our organs of the state are terminally leprous with […]
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Posted inNews/Politics
Can’t we all just get along?
Submitted by Suntosh Pillay What a day they had to choose! It’s ironic that the ANC’s Polokwane conference began on the Day of Reconciliation, December 16. But first, here’s two stories about four men. Zackie Achmat, leader of the Treatment Action Campaign, recently married Dallie Weyers, “an Afrikaans boy from the Free State”. They’re both […]
Posted inGeneral
Could this be my last blog?
I have a T-shirt brought back from the Newseum in Washington, DC, that reads: “Trust me, I am a reporter”. It’s the one I am wearing in this month’s issue of Empire, the boldest and most adventurous and fecund new magazine to hit South Africa’s bookshelves in years. After so long we have a magazine […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Scorpions and now organised crime? Why not just legalise corruption?
I have worked on many cases involving the Scorpions and the organised crime unit over the years. While both have their flaws — who doesn’t? — they are nonetheless our knights in shining armour and, without a doubt, our spearhead in the fight against major crime. They comprise highly trained and courageous professionals who are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Behind the scenes at the African Union summit
Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese President, was standing just a metre away from me. I thought of asking him if I could have a picture taken with him. I wanted to show the photo to my neighbours in Khartoum. But then I thought about my friend Huda who had just quit her job with the Sudanese […]
Posted inLifestyle, Sport
The Windies, bad anthems and Shaun Pollock
Could it really be true, as Silwane and others have alluded to in the past, that music is a mind-altering substance and a direct cause of major changes of the course of history? I wonder, because it is entirely possible, isn’t it? I know what effect music has on me, the state of my soul […]
Posted inTech
Seven things I learnt from one year of blogging for money
The first thing I learnt — and admittedly it took a fair number of months — was that I should not have given up my day job. Alright, I didn’t give up the day job as I didn’t have one to start off with. But still. I would have starved if I had depended on […]
Posted inGeneral
These blacks
These blacks. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. But mostly, I’m actually just tired of whites always being called racists just because we point out that things are screwed and the country is going down the toilet. We’re going to end up like Zimbabwe. And so what if Helen Zille or Tony Leon are white? […]
Posted inGeneral
Stealing chickens
Professor Steven Friedman, sir, I write in response to your blog entitled “Eskom, Zuma and some people’s nightmares“. As a white South African, I am greatly disturbed by you (a professor) casually calling disgruntled white South Africans “racists”. Please allow me a little story to illustrate part of my point: I once met a lovely […]
Posted inLifestyle
Fan fiction: Improving youth literacy
For many fans of Harry Potter, the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, does not signify the end of the story. There are thousands of young people who write their own additions to, subplots within, and alternative endings or continuations to the world of sorcery and Hogwarts. At the time […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Has Oprah chosen race over gender or are Hillary’s supporters being sexist?
The Times of London headlines with “Women turn on ‘traitor’ Oprah Winfrey for backing Barack Obama“. Oprah.com retorts with “Calling Oprah racist = SEXIST“. Whatever your read on this, America’s biggest talk-show host is paying a huge price to support Obama’s campaign. Her website has been flooded with personal attacks that may have led to […]
Posted inGeneral
Much ado about … well, quite a lot actually
Spare a thought for the family of Andrew Olmsted. You may not know him, or even have heard of him, but you’re about to. This is what was posted on his blog site over the weekend: “This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we […]