Posted inNews/Politics

I’m exhausted

I’m exhausted by my privilege. I’m exhausted with restaurants filled with primarily white patrons. I’m exhausted that those serving these white consumers are mainly black. I’m exhausted by the ignorance of those in the vicinity to see the difference. I’m exhausted when I climb off a Gautrain bus only to see a man scrounging through […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Tribal identity vanishing fast

Recent debates on tribalism and other related matters have generated more heat than light. Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele has reportedly accused the government of sponsoring tribalism to divide the country. At an address to students at Unisa in April this year former president Thabo Mbeki uttered similar remarks that rang alarm bells on the […]

Posted inEqualityNews/Politics

ID blocking: A growing threat to nationality

By Liesl Muller South Africa’s 1994 elections paved the way for all citizens to enjoy the human rights flowing from equal citizenship but rumours of the deficient pre-electoral registration of the previously disadvantaged have been wholly disregarded in the wake of apartheid’s fall. The effects of rushed registration policies have caught up with us and […]

Posted inGeneral

What does authentically African mean?

Over the last 20 years, self-appointed custodians of “authentic Africaness” have derogatively referred to fellow blacks as “coconuts”, that is, citizens with black skins but white souls or cultural tendencies. Perhaps instead of feeling indignant and insulted, it is important to provide a context for what is meant by this label. It may be long […]

Posted inGeneral

The capitalist

One gets a clue regarding the status of the capitalist subject in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1987: 457-458) where the downside of capitalism is put in clearer perspective than in Anti-Oedipus (where capital is depicted as a gigantic “body-without-organs” to which “desiring-machines” attach themselves intermittently, at different points – something that lends itself […]

Posted inGeneral

Could you handle losing your job?

Have you ever lost your job or worried about being retrenched? How did you handle it? How did you keep going? For some, the loss of a job is too much, as it was for the Cell C employee who committed suicide because he had heard he was about to lose his job. My heart […]