I was at Mbare township’s netball complex on Saturday April 3 2010 for ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s rally. Mbare is Zimbabwe’s oldest high-density suburb and is also one of the areas that suffered tremendously from the Robert Mugabe regime’s shameful Operation Murambatsvina or Operation Get Rid of Filth, which left thousands of Zimbabweans […]
ANC
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The days of our politicians’ lives
By Gosiame Legoale I have a president who has an affinity for showers and an appetite for women, matched only by my imagination when boastfully declaring to any who would care to listen exactly how many skirts I’ve accounted for. I have a deputy president who has no official deputy first lady to utilise as […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The unions: For whom do they speak?
When it comes to the Tripartite Alliance, Oscar Wilde’s observation that the proper basis for a marriage is a mutual misunderstanding seems rather apt. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has himself used the matrimonial metaphor. When Zuma invites the unions to join the national executive council (as he did this past week), he is extending […]
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Malema swaggers to the gaming table in the Last Chance Saloon
Expelled African National Congress Youth League leader, Julius Malema, may know how to whip up a paramilitary posse of slathering, beret-wearing fascists, but when it comes to taking strategic decisions he just hasn’t a clue. When the chips are down he behaves like an alcohol befuddled gambler in the Last Chance Saloon, rashly doubling and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Enemies, enemies, everywhere
“No rubbernecking,” I was told by an official when I crossed into Zimbabwe from Botswana in the late 1990s. I immediately understood that as a journalist I am allowed entry as long as I don’t “snoop around”. Zanu-PF’s resistance to being held accountable, also by “outsiders”, had already by that early stage infiltrated the lower […]
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Courting disaster: Is there a con in Constitution?
No head of state, whether they’re a monarch, an elected president or the ruler of a party in office, can be happy seeing their decisions made null and void or the laws they pass overturned by some other authority. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama said, “With all due deference to […]
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Malema may be gone, but issues still remain
Late on Saturday morning, in true African time, a ramrod Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a flinty speech that was not only a preamble to the African National Congress’s verdict on youth league leader Julius Malema, but a warning sign to the rest of the party: ill-discipline will not be tolerated. By upholding the guilty verdict, the […]
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The politics of confusion
It seems politics has become nothing but a crusade in confusion, confusing the very same people who voted politicians into office. Politicians get caught up in the fruitless and wasteful game of politicking while bravely maintaining the lie that they are working for our interests. I must start by saying we need to understand that […]
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Julius Malema: Why he will be missed
Juju bashing isn’t as much fun as it used to be. If you type Malema into Google, the second suggestion the browser makes is “Malema jokes”. The latest one is that his girlfriend has twins and Malema is wondering which of them is his. I’m not entirely comfortable with such jokes; I know some people […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Crush Occupy Rondebosch Common
It’s been a glorious summer in Cape Town. The heatwave had one and all at swimming pools and beaches all over the Cape. Long Street was packed with clubbers and tourists from all over the world. Drinks flowed freely: Hennessy, Bacardi, Hunters, Carling, you name it. Sadly, it was spoiled by talk of our beloved […]
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Where have all our intellectuals gone?
The strange nature of South African democracy in its static economic condition makes the position and function of so-called intellectuals and thought leaders within it very complex and almost dysfunctional. Those who consider themselves intellectuals are not, at face value, critically engaging with the patriarchal, racist and capitalist superpower structure which makes it almost impossible […]
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CSI Limpopo
The African National Congress’s elective conference to be held in Mangaung in December is throwing up a whole host of interesting collateral “debates”, as the appeal against ANCYL president Julius Malema’s sentence handed down by the ANC disciplinary committee and the administration of Limpopo’s finances clearly demonstrate. As you may recall, just prior to the […]