By Aidan Prinsloo In my previous contribution, I made a fairly simple point: the retrenchments proposed by the big mining companies in South Africa are unavoidable. The only way our mines can offer competitive prices and look after their employees properly is if they move from the outdated and inhumane many people, low-tech model to […]
Marikana
Posted inNews/Politics
Why Amplats is doing the unavoidable
By Aidan Prinsloo The upcoming retrenchments are neither malicious nor a justified retribution. Instead, they are signs of transition that South African business must make. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and Cosatu have expressed outrage at Amplats’ proposed cut of 14 000 jobs. Other mining companies are proposing similar cuts. Some think […]
Posted inBusiness
Amplats passing the buck after pocketing the rand
No wonder Anglo American Platinum, the world’s largest platinum producer, is fixing to lay off at least 14 000 workers. According to the Chamber of Mines of South Africa, the remuneration of a mineworker increased by an average of 30% each year between 1999 and 2011. I highly doubt the average mineworker increased his or […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why I’m scared of the police
The Audi R8 that crashed on Oxford Road last week, breaking into three fascinatingly horrible twisted lumps of metal, was always going to be one of those stories that captured the imagination. On talk radio, in the comments on news websites and on Twitter, it dominated conversation. At a client meeting later that day, it […]
Posted inGeneral
Marikana: From Foucault’s ‘bio-power’ to Agamben’s ‘Homo Sacer’
Readers of Michel Foucault will know that when he turned to Greek and (especially) Roman antiquity in his genealogical investigation of human sexuality, he found there admirable personal ethical practices, conducive to a high degree of autonomy under the rubric of “the care of the self”. In earlier genealogical studies, however, the picture that emerged […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Stadium deaths spotlight ANC dysfunctionality
Many will agree that the death of 34 miners in a hail of police gunfire at Marikana in August last year was a disastrous indicator of the African National Congress’ governance failures. A competent, modern administration does not mow down its citizens en masse. Nor does it run them to death. In an incident that […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Nine New Year’s resolutions for Parliament
Many of us make New Year’s resolutions as a sign of a fresh start or courage to reach a specific goal. This year I decided to write a few for Parliament. 1 Forgotten (or to-be-forgotten) reports Our legislature has become very comfortable with writing comprehensive reports but does not implement them. Dusty reports include the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zumangaung
After the release of the National Development Plan (NDP) late 2011, the alliterative 2012 seemed to hold much promise. But it became a year of talk shops. For the first time ever, the national policy and elective conferences of the ANC, SACP, and Cosatu all fell in the same year. There was no implementing the […]
Posted inGeneral
Unpacking the discourse of domination
Over this past year I have written a series of essays that attempt to deconstruct the “discourse of domination” and have provided the links to these articles in this piece. These essays were written in response to a series of racialised events that happened in South Africa in 2012 — occurrences, which I posit, are […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We are the leaders we’re waiting for
It’s poor form for a so-called writer not to be able to express this without beckoning the aftertaste of half-digested Gouda but so be it: we are the leaders we’re waiting for. This is true and has been said many times, often with a Coelho-esque earnestness that’s left those with the misfortune of hearing it […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Insurgents closing in on Zuma, he’ll be gone by 2014
The opposition’s motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma coincided with the Shakespearean fall of CIA director David Petraeus. Both Zuma and Petraeus know about modern insurgencies. Petraeus wrote the US Army counterinsurgency strategy handbook when America was losing her wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zuma, with less success, is trying to fight off […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How should we remember Zuma’s presidency?
History is a complex social construction but a few grand narratives tend to stick out. Among other stories we’ll remember Mandela as the reconciliatory president, asking us to throw our “pangas into the sea” and forgive. We’ll remember Mbeki’s poetic appeal to our African identity, an aloof renaissance man and, bitter-sweet, as the statesman who […]