Thought Leader

Two days ago, November 9 2019, marked 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the irony has not escaped some people, that today one witnesses walls going up again everywhere. Nick Miller, in the Sydney Morning Herald (November 2 2019), for example, writes: Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, pulling the…

I am ashamed to be a South African man today. How have we fallen so far as a nation? From being celebrated globally as the ‘Rainbow Nation’ — for our peaceful transition to democracy; for our Constitution which stood as one of the best in the world because of the weight afforded to protecting basic…

By Jennifer Sigamoney Globally, South Africa’s democracy is venerated and remains a symbol of hope for the rest of the continent. Consequently, however, to the initiation of true, representative egalitarianism in 1994, South Africa has attracted more asylum seekers than any other nation. The focus of this article is a small Somali community of political…

I’ve been thinking about Trevor Noah’s op-ed in the New York Times, and its angry critiques, since the Day of Reconciliation in South Africa on December 16. Reconciliation is a thorny topic in our moody democracy, a reminder that the road to postcolonial hell is paved with good intentions. If you missed it, Noah argued…

By Franklyn Odhiambo Theorists say race is a representation of social differences in a code that defends interests and conflicts by referring to apparent physiological characteristics and the treatment of fixities from these references as social facts and thus empirical truths. They say too that racism and a race project occur when a group has…

By Yolanda Mitchell Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. This is a core value on which the Constitution is founded. Who doesn’t want to live in a country founded on such a noble base? It sounds like the Promised Land after all — especially to as many…

By Evans Wadongo The South African government will soon be in the country’s high court because petitioners from countries like Nigeria, Malawi and Zambia are displeased by the spate of xenophobic attacks and murders of migrants from their countries. These attacks and deaths have also sparked the #WeAreAfrica hashtag on social media, a 30 000 person…

By Alois Rwiyegura If South Africa fails to achieve an objective reading of what we simplistically call xenophobic attacks and take the correct actions, it will have to brace itself for a turbulent and unsafe future. Nobody would deny that the basis of these attacks on foreigners is the economic situation of the country. The…

I don’t know how to introduce myself anymore. I don’t know which hat to wear in public, or in identifying myself. Last week Friday, April 17, I wrote that “I’m not even sad or disappointed. I am pissed off and angry that there are South Africans who are attacking our brothers and sisters — fellow…

The conference that my partner and I are attending was supposed to be a welcome opportunity to visit the city of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Strauss, to mention only some of the greatest composers in the western musical canon. And then I haven’t even scratched the surface of Viennese artists and architects of various…