By Themba Dlamini It is Thursday, September 17 2015, the night of my daughter’s 18-month birthday. I have just arrived at OR Tambo International Airport from a successful speaking engagement in Cape Town. On my way home from the airport I stop at a traffic light and my window is aggressively mowed down by a […]
crime
Posted inEquality, General
Crime, capital and economic apartheid
In the book Blank: Architecture, Apartheid and After (edited by H Judin and I Vladislavic; David Philip Publishers, Cape Town 1998), Lindsay Bremner’s contribution, “Crime and the emerging landscape of post-apartheid Johannesburg” (pp. 48-63) uncovered the roots of racial segregation in the origins of Johannesburg as a gold mining camp in 1886. During the apartheid […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The charm of Vienna cannot obliterate the abjection of SA
The conference that my partner and I are attending was supposed to be a welcome opportunity to visit the city of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Strauss, to mention only some of the greatest composers in the western musical canon. And then I haven’t even scratched the surface of Viennese artists and architects of various […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mvoko mugging video: Racial divisions find life in the comment section
Vuyo Mvoko, an SABC contributing editor, was mugged last night. Did you hear about it? Perhaps you’ve seen the viral video that caught the offenders’ faces. It’s everywhere; on all major local news websites. Maybe, upon seeing it, you feel you have a sympathetic message to share, or maybe you’re just outraged at the frequency […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics, Tech
Mum and the stolen iPhone – iRest my case
(Continued from here) What I know is this: on January 12 2015 my friend the Diplomat left his iPhone unattended for five minutes, someone nicked the phone and a week later the “new owner” replaced the phone’s cloud data with his own phone book. Whoever is now in the possession of the phone has a […]
Posted inEnvironment, Lifestyle, News/Politics, Tech
Mum and the stolen iPhone
Over the weekend I met up with my friend the Diplomat and he presented me with an opportunity that I could not resist. We had not chatted since December when he spent his holidays in Cape Town and it was time to catch up. Although his time in the Mother city delivered on all the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
My captain, murdered for a cellphone…
It was long before dawn. I moved carefully so as not to disturb the woman who sleeps next to my heart every night I am home. But she awakened suddenly and saw that I was dressing up. “What is it,” she asked. “You’re not having a heart attack, are you?” I have an unusually high […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Senzo: Let’s get rid of the guns
It was in 2007 when my bother first told me that there would be someone calling me regarding the confirmation of his gun licence. I knew he had a gun because my mother always grumbled saying she didn’t understand why he had it in the first place, but I had never had to deal with […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Crime: There is something rotten in the state of South Africa
Driving to work this morning I heard the news about the fatal shooting of Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates captain Senzo Meyiwa. Saddening and extremely disturbing as it is, the irony of the matter is that it is even more saddening that the vast majority of people who fall senseless victims to the apparently never-ending […]
Posted inGender violence
Relationships of violence: Why abuse counts
If you combine anger and power in a petri dish you often get violence and abuse. You can take it further and combine a history of male shame, violence as a means to end oppression, and outdated notions of masculinity and the results are pretty scary: you end up with a nation of angry men […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
An apology to my fellow countrymen
To: Dr Piet Mulder The Freedom Front Plus The FW de Klerk Foundation And everyone who was offended My recent article on the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader website on Tuesday, March 4 2014 has hurt, embarrassed and insulted fellow countrymen. In the article, I questioned whether Oscar Pistorius would be on trial if he […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Oscar would be a hero if Reeva were a black man
[For an update to this post see An apology to my fellow countrymen by Sandile Memela] Would Oscar Pistorius be on trial for murder if Reeva Steenkamp had turned out to be a black man? In fact, on Valentine’s Day last year when Pistorius fired four fatal shots at close range through a locked bathroom […]