By 2050, China is predicted to have an economy twice the size of the US economy. What will this shift in power mean for trade and international relations?
nationalism
Posted inMedia
The prevailing myth of Afrikaner self-reliance
Reading the visual and aural codes of the song ‘Ons Sal Self’ reveals more about some Afrikaners than Afrikaners may be comfortable with
Posted inEquality
A bold, selfless youth are the solution to Africa’s stagnation
One of the obstacles keeping us back are some of the older generation wanting to amass wealth before making fundamental changes
Posted inNews/Politics
DA: A liberal party suddenly fearful of ideas?
“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie” – Yevgeny Yevtushencko Strange times these. A proposed non-electoral pact between the ANC, a party synonymous with the advent of South African democracy, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a party slavishly devoted to naked populism, would see them collaborating to evade electoral accountability […]
Posted inEquality
Gasping for hope
Despite overwhelming support for Black Lives Matter, we feel hopeless — racial equality is more dream than reality and racism has never been enough for people to take to the streets
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Home is where the soul grows
I don’t like the idea of “nationalism”, it sounds divisive and exclusive, but on days like Freedom Day I secretly wish I could hold a more legitimate claim to this country, which has adopted me. In thinking about this, a poem I came across on Facebook recently comes to mind. It is entitled “Diaspora Blues” […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The intimate and unbearable shackles of racism
You know this scene all too well: you’re in a supermarket and the person in front of you whispers a racist epithet under their breath. Apparently black shop clerks are to blame for shopping rush hours. Or you stumble into a serious debate where accusations of racism are used as a distraction to shut down […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Escape velocity
The astronomer Fred Hoyle once observed: “Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.” Which is to say it’s twelve hours nearer to us than Cape Town is to Johannesburg. Imagine such a perpendicular journey: 100km above sea level we cross the Karman line — […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The liberal project and DA discontent
Those interested in the DA or inadvertently exposed to it would be aware of an on-going, often heated, discussion about the ideological underpinnings of the party and its political future. Contributors have included Gareth van Onselen (and again), DA executive communications director Gavin Davis and former party leader Tony Leon. There were also two pieces […]
Posted inGeneral
Lennon and Laing – kindred spirits
John Lennon and RD Laing – two individuals who worked in entirely different cultural fields; the one a singer, songwriter and pop star, the other a psychiatrist (perhaps experimental psychiatrist), writer and radical thinker of the left. What they had in common, was arguably the fact that they were both utopian visionaries, and both were […]
Posted inGeneral
Apartheid for better or for worse
I have fallen into the trap myself: become so outraged by government mismanagement that I wanted to beat them with the biggest stick I could: “It is worse than it was under apartheid!” Unfortunately, this is not what “worse than under apartheid” communicates to most South Africans. It is all too easily read as “better […]