The timing of United States President Barack Obama’s two-day state visit to South Africa was less than ideal. Overshadowing the political arena was a looming, distracting historical backdrop: former president Nelson Mandela’s faltering but determined struggle to live. Both leaders were acutely aware that they had to avoid any perception of insensitivity to the prevailing […]
Jacob Zuma
Posted inNews/Politics
For the love of Mandela
By Derek Hook How should one approach the obsessive media speculation concerning Nelson Mandela’s declining health and approaching death? Such commentary as a rule wavers between requests that we respect Mandela’s privacy, honour the appropriate cultural customs and an unrelenting — and at times prurient — hunger for ever more details pertaining to Mandela and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Beware the boy who cries ‘Zulufication’
In Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a shepherd boy alone on a hillside tending to sheep called on people in a nearby village to help him chase away a wolf that was attacking his flock. There was no wolf of course. He was just doing what bored shepherd boys are tempted to do […]
Posted inBusiness
Disco brings the rand back
I’m not a huge fan of ATM fees. My feeling is if banks insist on charging cover for access to money that was mine to begin with the least they can do is roll out the red carpet. Offer me the financial equivalent of getting kissed before I get screwed. It’s only appropriate considering the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why Guy Scott might hate South Africa
By Neil Achary Guy Scott, who is vice-president of Zambia and, incidentally, a white Zambian, has ruffled a few feathers by saying that he hates South Africa. In an interview with The Guardian, although he seemed to imply that he likes South Africans on an individual basis, he dislikes South Africa for the same reason […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Jacob who? Mandela takes refuge in the fog of age
For me, the iconic photograph of George W Bush was of the American president reading to a bunch of kindergarten kids. It was conceived as standard pre-election pap, a photo opportunity to show the caring side of the nation’s most powerful man. But as it happened the date was September 11, 2001 and the picture […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
It is all The Media’s fault
It is The Media’s fault for tarnishing South Africa’s image. If it was not for them the world’s wealthiest people would be investing all their trillions here. Even the local investors would invest in their own country. If it were not for the bloody media we would not know about any of this: What Safa […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We will ask questions about CAR
By Ntsako Shivambu I am one of those so-called clever blacks who believe you are a tribalist, a traditionalist and a clueless politician that doesn’t have any leadership skills. But the reason I’m writing this letter is not to talk about that but what you said during the memorial service for the soldiers who died […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The ANC and Zanu-PF: From struggle heroes to enemies of freedom
In 1963 Bram Fischer stood before a court and said “the defence … will show that the ANC is a broad national movement, embracing all classes of Africans within its ranks, and having the aim of achieving equal political rights for all South Africans”. Fischer was the lead defence counsel in the well-known Rivonia Trial […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The government must speak to the people not the media
The government does not need to fight or over-invest in the media. In fact, it can afford to keep its distance and insist on factual, accurate, correct and truthful reporting. It is an open secret that not only is the media overly juniorised but its professionals are so underpaid and demoralised they cannot uphold their […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma: The nation’s in a state
Say it just like you would “The Lord’s Prayer” Our President, which aren’t in Nk*ndla, Hello, be thy lame? Thy taxes come. Thy e-toll be done in Gauteng, As it is in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Cape. Give us this day a policeman as commissioner. And forgive us our minister of women, As we […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A survival kit for the ANC
It’s crucial that a parasite controls its intake. After all, if the host is sucked dry and consequently expires, so too does the parasite. It is this self-preserving biological imperative that lies behind the African National Congress’s intention to “name and shame” corrupt civil servants. This, it claims, will reduce the amount of R30-billion that […]