In early 2024 the small-time ex political science student in me was looking forward to a year that would so drastically change the country’s political landscape as to breath fresh life into it. Indeed that turned out to be the case albeit not in the manner I’d envisioned. Leading up to the election, uncharacteristic, vibrant …
A sea of red golfers, military styled caps and a mix of scowling and jubilant faces greet me as the cameras take me through the National People’s Assembly at the Nasrec Expo Centre. Dirges and the one-leg-up toi toi thunder at every nook, although it seems this is just more procedure than a party genuinely …
How does one eventually pin down a DIY tour guide who’s constantly out of town mingling with Cabinet Ministers and pitching ideas to potential funders? This when he’s not at a gala to receive an award or been invited to promote the Northern Cape province at some tourism imbizo. Or when it’s a Saturday but …
From his vantage, how easy – and not entirely without reason – for the armchair critic to call Mzansi out as nothing but a melancholy ‘welfare state.’ Why wouldn’t he when some 30 million South Africans depend on some form of social grant? This figure shot up when government introduced the R350 relief of distress …
On the streets of a Karoo town in a welfare state Read More »
As the posts flooded my timeline in the wake of Breyten Breytenbach’s passing last Sunday, one question in particular gnawed at me. Had South Africa taken adequate stock of the renowned poet’s selflessness in his unyielding stance in the fight against repression and injustice as not to downplay his role? Now that it has become …
Breytenbach: The voice that will ring beyond the grave. Read More »
The answer Janco Piek gave when I broached the idea for this article was exactly the one I was expecting. ‘No man’ he wrote, ‘write on anything else, just not me.’ But this was a brief from the higher-ups. Had to deliver or there’d be no story. Mr Piek is the bearded, self-styled nerd on …
As the International Criminal Court threw down the gauntlet in The Hague last week, there was a man somewhere in South Africa who was probably smiling from his grave. On this severely divisive and polarising conflict, Nelson Mandela would not budge, making it expressly known which dog he had in this fight at a time …
Not quite singing for my supper, only that sometimes the heroes also happen to be the ones who are keeping the lights on. You write not to suck up but simply because they have proved to be more than deserving of the feature. One such a toppie was trundling in his Mahindra jeep – ‘the …
Who would’ve thought that even in the beer-addled, boisterous haunt that is a certain Karoo shebeen, where ordinarily the conversation alternates between the weekend derby or the poor shot taking pitiful aim at the pool table, everybody suddenly have their two cents on that president-elect. Everybody except those who prominently march under one political umbrella …
It blows one’s mind how Jasper keeps the show going. And the nuggets of written and spoken wisdom he offhandedly drops without even realising it. The guy doesn’t see very well, can hardly walk, and his body has withstood more than its fair share of old-man vicissitudes. But the biting sense of humour remains and …
