By Beth Vale A week ago, the equality court announced its verdict that the lyrics of struggle song “Dubul’ ibhunu” or “shoot the boer’ should be considered hate speech. The trial has evoked months of public debate and has not been short of media commentary. Despite this, it is only in the last few days […]
Julius Malema
Posted inNews/Politics
Malema misguided on judicial transformation
African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema selected the decisions in his case before the equality court in Johannesburg and those of Robert McBride and Bees Roux to draw the conclusion that the South African judiciary has failed to transform since the end of apartheid. This, like many of his other utterances, is not […]
Posted inNews/Politics
To Messrs Scott, Malema, Cliff and AfriForum
Well lads, you seem to be in a fine mess, and we’re all right behind you. As South Africans, we love to polarise. As you know, we come from a place of black and white and, as much as we say we want to, we’re just not ready for the mental exercise required to build […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The cutting edge of our collective madness
Why is it that I always seem to confront the nakedness of my own soul in airports? It happened again a few nights ago. On September 11, no less. I must have been crazy to brave the terrors of high-altitude traveling on a date so loaded with ominous precedents, but there I was, dead on […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Reaction to Lamont shows South Africans have lost the plot
The decision handed down by Judge Colin Lamont in the Equality Court in Johannesburg, regarding the matter of AfriForum versus Julius Sello Malema et al, should have been well received yet it is coming under fire from the African National Congress, the African National Congress Youth League and even Professor Pierre de Vos. Judge Lamont’s […]
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 […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lamont, you have just censored my history in the name of ‘democracy’
By Gugu Ndima The awfully narrated judgment against Comrade Julius Malema at the Equality Court coincided with the 34th anniversary of the death of one of the most celebrated Pan-African intellectuals to date. He boldly said in one of his interviews, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of […]