The National Development Plan (NDP) identifies education and innovation as fundamental contributors to South Africa’s development by way of addressing poverty and inequality challenges in society. The NDP goes a step further, in recognising that universities produce new knowledge and find new ways in which to apply existing knowledge. There are very bold (but achievable) […]
Wits
Posted inGeneral
#FeesMustFall is unravelling SA’s founding pact
Post-1994 South Africa is founded on the principle of progressive access to privilege. This principle implies that those in the suburbs will continue to live there while those in shacks will be progressively admitted into the ranks of those with houses and amenities. It also implies that those that earn decent salaries will continue to […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
#WitsFeesMustFall: Why part-time student work is not the answer
I must commend the Wits students for standing up for a very real issue that affects students across the country. You are my heroes! Some social media commenters have berated the student protesters for not finding part-time jobs to fund their studies. Based on my own student experience at Wits, I cannot agree that it […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Black consciousness and Nazism, really?
After two days following the postings generated by Thorne Godhino’s article, “With friends like these, does black consciousness need enemies?”, I feel I must now confess to an unfulfilled anticipation on my part that someone (why not me I am not sure) would make a particular intervention in this important conversation. Before I get to […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
South Africa’s Weimar moment?
What motivates a young black student leader — and we’re not talking here of a self-hating Uncle Tom-like figure but of one well to the left of Malcolm X — to fulsomely declare his admiration for Adolf Hitler? It is surely common knowledge that extreme anti-black racism was an inextricable part of the Nazi ideology. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
With friends like these, does black consciousness need enemies?
Mcebo Dlamini is a complex man. He’s the former SRC president at Wits. He spent his days claiming to be a Sisulu grandchild, spinning tall tales of political grandeur and insight into a liberation family that he actually had no ties to. The story may have changed many times, details being replaced with more believable […]
Posted inEquality, General
Times are changing…
It was at a girl’s varsity residence room the morning after we had sex that I read, for the first time, Steve Biko’s I write what I like. I was lying next to her, naked, and she had a handful of books on a bedside table. I read the first few essays, which left me […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Shoot the Jew’ – hidden mantra of Israel’s enemies
The true face of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement (BDS) was revealed on the steps leading up to the Great Hall at Wits by a group of protesters who hurled abuse at attendees of a concert by Daniel Zamir, an Israeli jazz quartet last Wednesday. Things turned ugly when some of the protestors chanted […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Bloody nose for Wits BDS activists
It is surely a measure of my willingness to suffer martyrdom for my faith that I was prepared to endure ninety minutes of ghastly squawking at last night’s jazz recital at Wits. The Daniel Zamir Quartet, comprising four Israeli musicians, was to play in the Great Hall, and it was essential that there be a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Surreal manipulation of truth by Wits concert disrupters
It doesn’t matter what ball you put in your opponent’s court so long as you spin it. Shane Warne would agree, and so would those behind the break-up of a concert by Israeli-born pianist Yossi Reshev at Wits last March. Ever since that incident, the latter and their apologists have presented a consistently changing set […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Israeli pianist’s performance disrupted by Wits students
On the evening of March 12 2013 an Israeli-born pianist’s performance to a full auditorium at Wits was disrupted and abruptly ended when anti-Israel protestors, which included members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Wits Student Representative Council (SRC) and the Muslim Students Association repeatedly broke into the auditorium. Yossi Reshef is a world-renowned pianist, […]