Against the backdrop of Worker’s Day on 1 May, alleged acts of vigilantism aimed at suspected foreign nationals were being teleported in high definition from the streets of downtown Johannesburg into international media outlets like Sky News. What ought to have been a day of remembering the struggles and celebrating gains made by the working …
Revisiting the nation’s amble towards democracy from the perspective of Colesberg and other rural areas arouses interesting stories from people of otherwise simple backgrounds. Frontline activists recall a monumental task that history had cut out for them. At the outset, it was education-driven. Brief, off-the-cuff, a night-school-like crusade with little time to assess if the …
Freedom Day: Colesberg’s nostalgia and empty seats in Bloem Read More »
This week the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) announced that they would be seeking to have registration fees paid to various councils like the HPCSA and SACE by unemployed professionals scrapped. In a letter to the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training, EFF MP Sihle Lonzi ‘submitted a formal request to Parliament for urgent intervention …
In a sentence that ‘induces a sense of shock,’ on Thursday, 16 April, Julius Malema was sentenced to 5 years direct imprisonment. This follows a criminal case brought by Afriforum against Malema based on a video that emerged of the EFF Chief-in-Command (CIC) discharging a firearm during his party’s fifth birthday celebrations back in Mdantsane, …
On an ordinary day – that is when talking business, or Sundowns’ weekend performance – Patrice Motsepe is a cardsharp of decorum, tailored suits and a man who does not seem to sweat the small stuff. This is the unguarded personality he usually lets on. That is until some pesky journalist throws an unexpected question …
Motsepe, the President, DA all playing on tough ground Read More »
You may have missed a potentially groundshifting but underreported story that transpired at OR Tambo International Airport where three Nigerian nationals were barred from entering the country on Sunday, 5 April. Not because they did not have the requisite paperwork, nor because they had committed any criminal act. One of the alleged offences apparently was …
The Sunrise Community Advice & Human Rights Centre office on Kuyasa’s main road is ordinary and unassuming only inasfar as the few books that adorn the shelves, the four low-hung wooden chairs and the modest wages drawn from a personal savings account. Two weeks old, almost everything is either a hand me down or a …
When on 6 February, Sports Arts and Culture minister Gayton McKenzie approved that Graaff-Reinet would thenceforth be named Robert Sobukwe Town in honour of the political activist and Pan-African Congress leader and founder, he had poked the badger. The town immediately exploded into a frenzy, culminating in tensions, protests, and a seething impasse that has …
Quite understandably, the bluenose reader will consider the occasional gleaning on social media, at best, as tardy journalism. So I trust they’ll forgive my eavesdropping this past Sunday on Songezi Zibi’s ‘presser’ of another kind. The Rise Mzansi leader and chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) was sat candidly discussing the work …
Over the past week my social media timeline has led one to believe that in the upcoming local government elections (LGE) the City of Johannesburg will be where the gloves come off and there’ll likely be blood on the floor. Whilst elsewhere the canvassing mostly creeps up subliminally in the form of potholes being fixed, …
Joburgh might be the litmus test of SA’s political future. Read More »
