On May 7 2014 I’ll be voting for the second time. This time I won’t quiver as I draw my “X”. I won’t care about all the hopeful politicians populating party election lists. I’m voting for me, and I’m voting so that some of those hopeful politicians don’t get in again. I am not going […]
youth wage subsidy
Posted inNews/Politics
To the ANC president: A new vision for the nation
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela Dear Mr President. I imagine that the African National Congress is scrambling, like many others, to appropriate and monopolise on Mandela’s legacy. His legacy is important to the ANC, and it should be. Mandela is a symbol of the […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Trading old chestnuts for new – young, angry and black
“It would make an am-a-zing scarecrow, don’t you think?” asks a friend. Save the dull narrative of South Africa’s miracle, another chestnut has crept into South Africa’s discourse. This time around, there’s no Shosholoza humming or rainbows. “Young, angry and black” and its variants has become a phrase dished out with little thought. It passes […]
Posted inGeneral
White males, naked capitalism and ending economic apartheid
The country watches transfixed as the ANC creaks and groans like a wooden ship trapped in Antarctic ice. The ANC has long kept the lid on things, like some benevolent dictator might have done. But now the ship threatens to break apart. There goes the life boat. People cling to its splintered timbers hoping these […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
“A better life for all”: The case for a youth wage subsidy
By Matthew de la Hey The South African unemployment rate is currently 25.2%. This means that 4.5-million people who had sought employment within the four weeks preceding the reference week were unable to find a job. This figure rises to 38% if those who have given up hope and have stopped looking — the “discouraged […]
Posted inGeneral
The DA rocks
The leader of the Democratic Alliance may still be proved correct when she trumpeted that the party’s march on Cosatu House “will come to be seen as a turning point in South Africa”. In Johannesburg last Tuesday, the march led by Helen Zille and MP Lindiwe Mazibuko escalated into a violent street fight after members […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Marching left but walking (and talking) right
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce” is Karl Marx’s famous quote in his 1852 book titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. In the preface to the book, Marx said it was his specific intention to demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships which made it possible for […]