We’re still coping
South Africans are masters of craziness and natural geniuses when it comes to insults.
Tourist-hunting season now open
You know something, this sucks mightily. Tourist-hunting season opens, and we hear of it first from the British? Typical of our authorities. This is incompetence at its most apathetic. How African of the government. No wonder the Brits want to re-colonise this place. What, have you never heard Uncle Bob Mugabe speak? Wouldn’t that be…
Do you have a favourite toilet?
The number of page hits that certain blog posts get on this website would suggest that Thought Leader readers like to read about the government, politics and how everything is going wrong, wrong, wrong with the ANC. You, the reader, want to discuss Zuma, Malema and those okes. Well, terribly sorry to disappoint. This isn’t…
Bono vs The internet
The interwebs were buzzing angrily yesterday because of something Bono* said. Bono, remember him? He’s the frontman for that famous Irish rock band U2. In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, he suggested that the net should be policed to a certain extent to stop what he dubbed reverse Robin Hooding. He…
Rejoicing over Manto’s death is grotesque
The news of the death of former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang broke on Twitter soon after lunch, and it was fun watching the back-and-forth between the editors and the public as the media frantically searched for someone to confirm the rumours. There was even a moment of drama as some claimed that Manto wasn’t in…
What to buy for the birthday of baby Jesus?
I absolutely love Christmas time. Fewer things bring more pleasure to my heart. The socks nailed to the mantelpiece. The merry crackle of the festive log in the hearth. Or in our case, the merry crackle of the kameeldoring trees as they festively burn under the fearsome Natal sun. The sound of the children drowning…
I’m declaring a moratorium on ‘copygate’
If I had wanted to be really thick, I would have entitled this piece “I’m Declaring Gategate on ‘-Gate’ “. But there’s a limit to how much a human being should be permitted to suffer. We all know who to blame for all of this. If, however, you’ve spent the last 37 years at the…
What have the bloody savages done now?
There’s a scene in the 1995 Jock of the Bushveld* film that has been seared into my memory. A messenger comes running up to the governor of the Cape and says, “News of Shaka, sir!” The governor then says, “What’s the bloody savage done now?” When I first heard of the interdict against umkhosi wokweshwama…
My current predicament is Denny Crane’s fault
It’s December again (“hello, hello Dezember” to my Joburg folk), and your thoughts right now are probably filled with the incredibly arduous job of buying Christmas gifts, fattening the Christmas turkey and stocking the Christmas-hosting house with the appropriate foods and liquids. Good on you. Oh, by the way. If anyone has a direct number…
Sipho the goatherd
No self-respecting African male is complete without a convincing herd boy experience in his past. It’s very “previously disadvantaged”. If you didn’t grow up in the rural areas and thus couldn’t have herded anything larger than a skinny township chicken, you can supplant the herd boy past with a taxi boy past. Truth be told…