Posted inBusinessNews/Politics

We are rebuilding an economic apartheid instead of dismantling it

In the mid-1980s South Africa’s prime overdraft rate went to 25%, inflation rocketed to 20.9% and the apartheid government abolished the financial rand exchange rate system in 1983 as international banks refused to renew credit lines for South Africa. The world was punishing South Africa for being a pariah, a scum state, violating the fundamental […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Native life in South Africa

While watching the stories of people’s shacks being flooded in Cape Town’s informal settlements recently, I thought of Sol Plaatje and his manuscript that was published in 1916, Native life in South Africa. In response to the Native Land Act of 1913 he wrote a book highlighting the consequences of the act as well as […]

Posted inGeneral

How much money is enough?

By Mario Meyer Aristotle, in The Nicomachean Ethics, makes the following assertion: “The life of money-making is one undertaken by compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.” One of the intractable questions of moral philosophy is the question of […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Crush Occupy Rondebosch Common

It’s been a glorious summer in Cape Town. The heatwave had one and all at swimming pools and beaches all over the Cape. Long Street was packed with clubbers and tourists from all over the world. Drinks flowed freely: Hennessy, Bacardi, Hunters, Carling, you name it. Sadly, it was spoiled by talk of our beloved […]