Posted inGeneralNews/Politics

The assassination of Shaka the unifier is a lesson for the ANC

South Africans celebrate the enigmatic historical figure of Shaka Zulu, the military revolutionary who rose from illegitimacy to be a unifying monarch who used alliances and the occasional judicial assassination to build a Zulu powerhouse on South Africa’s east coast in the 1800s. Ironically, while Shaka’s use of military power, diplomacy and patronage succeeded at […]

Posted inEqualityGender violenceMediaNews/Politics

The Remember Khwezi protest has shone a spotlight on our society’s patriarchal nature

In the last chapter of The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court, author Mmatshilo Motsei starts her concluding remarks by quoting Sello wa Loate: [w]e need to re-evaluate our value system as a society. The highly competitive environment we have created and the resultant conflict and pressure on different sections of our society make post-apartheid black […]

Posted inNews/Politics

On Workers’ Day, it’s Anarchy vs Chaos

Certain common word usages literally get my blood boiling. Okay, that one was on purpose. Slate’s great podcast, Lexicon Valley, discusses all kinds of language-related topics, like the evolution of swearing, the etymology of the word “dude”, how children acquire language. They make it a principle to stay away from superior judgments on so-called incorrect […]

Posted inNews/Politics

While the ANC factions manoeuvre, SA drifts in limbo

A national crisis is always best resolved quickly. Investors and voters both react negatively to political paralysis and institutional dysfunction. And since protracted uncertainty begets instability, it’s mostly better to find a quick patch and keep the momentum going than it is to embark on an agonising and usually elusive search for the “best” solution. […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Time to ditch SA’s failed Moral Regeneration Movement

Universal brotherhood. World peace. Nuclear disarmament. And to this beseech-the-fairies wish list of above, you can add the concept of moral re-armament in South Africa. All laudable but irretrievably doomed objectives. What brought this to mind was the weekend speech by Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, in which she noted that assassinated SA Communist […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Time for Zuma to go

By Motsumi Maubane The perception that the Gupta family has a hold on President Jacob Zuma, in my mind, constitutes high treason and a serious threat to our national security for this would compromise our constitutional democracy and sovereignty of our South African state. Essentially it would mean the family has usurped executive authority from […]