The celebration of University of Fort Hare’s 100th anniversary has, indeed, revealed historical revisionism to portray the university as a hot bed of revolutionaries. This is a predictable political revision as the desire is to create the profession that former students were trained and destined for revolutionary roles in society. But one ZK Matthews does […]
apartheid
Posted inEquality, General
The particularity of race and the universality of being human: Derrida on Mandela
Judging by the seemingly never-ending spate of articles, debates, and to-and-fro accusations that reflect a veritable obsession with race in this country — an obsession one might have expected to abate somewhat at this point in time, almost 22 years after the demise of apartheid — it appears to me a timeous moment to return […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
What is the colour of South Africa’s soul?
In the movie 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup asks, “What difference is there in the colour of a soul?” Such a question will raise eyebrows and tempers in South Africa, where the word “colour” sends a rush of emotions flooding down to angry hands from polarising thoughts. We are a rainbow — but our […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Blacks ‘portraying’ victimhood: Gwen Ngwenya’s tall (reckless) ask of a nation
Unfortunately I am about to do something that I’m not often a fan of doing, namely engage in debate on the internet. One thing I’ve learned about the online space is that it is where people often come to take a mental dump due to its accessibility. God bless us all if Twitter decides to […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Thank you Penny
A preamble: just as Penny Sparrow does not speak for me, I do not speak for any of you. But I am hoping that some of you will at least listen, and think, and reflect. As a white South African, I’d like to say thank you to Penny Sparrow. Without her, we wouldn’t be having […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
How to show leadership
I have often stated that organisational success is only possible if four critical factors in the strategic framework are in harmony and aligned: purpose, vision, strategy and leadership. The state is no exception to this requirement. I have also cautioned that context is the first and most critical constraint or limiting factor to defining and […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The rainbow nation needs a paint job
By Franklyn Odhiambo Theorists say race is a representation of social differences in a code that defends interests and conflicts by referring to apparent physiological characteristics and the treatment of fixities from these references as social facts and thus empirical truths. They say too that racism and a race project occur when a group has […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Being a dominee in SA today – A letter to my Dutch Reformed ancestors
By Nadia Marais Dear ancestors, I write to you because I hope you might help us following the uproar last week after the Dutch Reformed Church’s General Synod decided to recognise same-sex relationships. On the one hand it is strange that there is such an uproar at all, not only because one of the core […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
It is too soon to forget about apartheid
I recently watched the movie Woman in Gold. It is based on a true story about Maria Altmann’s journey in getting the Austrian government to return to her a Klimt painting that was stolen from her family during the Nazi occupation of Austria during World War II. This women’s journey towards justice is a long […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
My name is Tim, I’m a racist and I’m running for president
A non-practising one. Probably best to make that clear right up front. “You cannot teach a racist to change,” says Rusty Bedsprings on an online forum, “you can only show him that his bigotry holds no power”. Wrong. You can and it does, big time. This is the whole point: Racism has South Africa by […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The poor economy is not all Zuma’s fault
Some lessons I have learned from reporting on economic crises: * Don’t fixate on any one cause. Economies are complex webs of interrelated phenomena. Interest-rate changes are not the whim of the central bank, ie the Reserve Bank. They depend on a range of other economic actors, including our government and other economies in the […]
Posted inEquality
The problem with “Why I can’t ‘get over’ apartheid”
I had the privilege of teaching both “white” and “black” children during the apartheid era, during the transition, and thereafter. This was from about 1988 to 2004.* Xhosa teenagers in Langa High** (I taught there in 1989 and 1990) were highly politicised, talked about oppression and how to dismantle apartheid. Once the ANC was unbanned […]