People sometimes ask me, ‘Don’t you miss South Africa?’ ‘No,’ I reply – but in the same heartbeat that answer is given comes my silent question, which South Africa? ‘You’re criticising South Africa Rod, the country you grew up in, that fed and clothed you, gave you an education, everything you have. Not cool.’ The same question rises….which […]
BEE
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Black economic empowerment is not black economic empowerment
By Michael Nassen Smith The BEE drum has been beaten many times before on both the right and the left on South Africa’s political spectrum. A recent piece on PoliticsWeb penned by John Kane-Berman gave what has become a standard liberal right critique of BEE. I think Berman is right to bemoan the influence of […]
Posted inEquality, Media, Tech
News24 right to axe online comments
Earlier this month News24, the country’s largest online news publisher, took a decision not to allow readers to post comments on all but a few select articles. According to its editor-in-chief Andrew Trench, too many commentators insisted on “pushing the boundaries of free speech”, with the result that comments “tediously drift towards hate speech at […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The A to Z of things we cannot blame on apartheid
At Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, President Jacob Zuma made the point that “he (Mandela) told us that the promises of democracy would not be met overnight … and we all agreed with him … ”. Was this a co-option of Madiba somehow to justify the slow pace of service delivery? While it is true that […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The white angst of Red October
Singer and aspirant politician Steve Hofmeyr delivered a heart-wrenching ode to the splendours and disappointments of Afrikaner white masculinity at the Red October march in Pretoria. But to get an even better sense of the thinking behind the campaign, just look at the two sponsors of its website: Comfizone and the Pistols Saloon. It’s so […]
Posted inNews/Politics
#KnowYourDA BEE pushes nothing new
I was snooping around the archives of the South African Institute of Race Relations during a visit earlier this year, particularly drawn to the boxes on the constitutional negotiations. One of these contained, among other things, the ANC’s position on a constitution for what would later become KwaZulu-Natal, academic and political discussions on federalism, and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Inequality may derail our democratic stability
The most persistent and grotesque characteristic of apartheid South Africa was the creation and maintenance of inequality premised on the superiority of one race over another. For well over three hundred years its policy focus and decisions were directed at reinforcing and sustaining the status quo with a view to ensuring that equal opportunity was […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How far we’ve fallen
By Rafique Gangat As SA’s first career diplomat of colour, I am pained to learn of what is happening to my beloved country. I took part in the painful struggle for freedom and eventually shared in the joy of liberation and democracy in 1994 and since then worked tirelessly to build the new SA. My […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Only an apartheid president would defend apartheid
It’s amazing how many whites keep singing the song that apartheid was a heinous crime against humanity, that it was inhumane, and that they didn’t support it. It’s also amazing how they become silent corroborators when apartheid villains like FW de Klerk go on international public platforms not only to justify apartheid but to actually […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
There’s a killer in my family
He’s doing 25 years. Then there’s another petty thief cousin who’s been “inside” for pilfering a bottle of Panache from Clicks — for his girlfriend, when he was down and out a few years ago. There’s also my mother’s cousin’s son, the career criminal and regular beater up of women — who spends his time […]
Posted inGeneral
Steve Biko is dead?
Someone recently said that when Steve Biko died 34 years ago, his philosophy of Black Consciousness died with him. They went on to charge that his inspiring and life-affirming psycho-political programme had been badly mangled by the Azanian People’s Organisation, which could not comprehend its essence beyond their obsession with the politics of skin colour. […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
That elusive economic freedom
We all know that politicians twist words to suit occasion, but the use of nationalisation is the most egregious yet. At times, nationalisation is taken to mean state intervention, for instance by setting up new companies, though that is not the general meaning. My friend Steven Friedman has argued that the ANCYL specifically means selective […]