When Doing The Sums, Do The BRICS Add Up?
Leaders of the BRICS nations. Image: Wikipedia
Kill the Boer; musings from a layman
Inasmuch as South Africa’s mainstream media offer worthwhile punditry particularly around the hot topic of race, it is, – I find – usually the reader comments that are most poignant. Coming as they do from everyday people, read them and it’s unequivocal: Ours remains a gravely divided nation of laagers and kraals; decrepitude, potholes and …
Shooting for the Moon, but is there enough fuel in the rocket?
If the Multi-Party Charter for SA (colloquially known as the Moonshot Pact) could be viewed as Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen’s biggest political move, the reportage in its wake was rather unenthused, derisive, and very far from convinced. Held at the same venue as the CODESA negotiations perhaps it was the brazen allusion that South …
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The Houses, Roads and 15-Year Wait
Bump into *Oldjohn Hewana, down to a T like the approachable residents of Kuyasa township: generally well-meaning, beanie slanted over one eyebrow, a piecemeal gig going here or there, thanks very much. But also, – even as he tries so hard to be of good cheer – the wan glare of discontent about him. An …
Spaza shop blues
Trundling off to a midday appointment eParkeni was running late for, we fell upon a sight that elicited palpable sighs, stopping us screeching in our tracks. Zama-Mbishe Store, for around two decades an enduring institution to township entrepreneurship, was closed shut, seemingly for good. Endearingly known as kwaMbishe – The Uglyish One’s – in reference …
White Town Dreaming; 20 Years On
A little over two decades ago, in 1991, Paul Bell, a suave city slicker with a square jaw and a restless flutter in his eyes, came riding into Colesberg on assignment for the reputable Leadership Magazine. His outstanding career in strategic communications with the Independent Electoral Commission and later, Bell Pottinger, still lay in the …
Reflections: Father of the Nation
On this Mandela Day (July, 18), eParkeni dug up an article published around this time 3 years ago on the City Press newspaper. Although the piece garnered the writer a few pats on the back as well as an interview on the Johannesburg-based radio station, PowerFM, it mostly saw him eaten up alive on various …
No funny business, only Partners in Sexual Health
On any given day peer into our local clinics and see the health troubles of our day writ large along the teeming corridors. Teenage pregnancy. HIV/AIDS. An overburdened public health care system where the dutiful Batho Pele principles posted on the walls are no more than wishful thinking for those who might not get assistance …
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The Forgotten Highway Summit
If you rode north of the Cape Colony in the late 18th century few could say for certain what awaited except a barren, untamed wilderness of savage beasts, unknown tribes, dust and locusts. Daunted but resolute, European missionaries nonetheless heeded the scriptural directive to be “fishers of men” and consequently fanned themselves out into this …
eParkeni on the 2024 Campaign Trail
News wafting through the political front are so bewildering, so defying of logic it’s hard to reconcile them as anything but fake news. Or something you’d expect on one of those free-to-air news channels that nobody who hasn’t settled his monthly DStv installment would bother tuning in to. Except the ones in question are – …