A satirical piece by the late Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina entitled How to Write about Africa and a recent one by the award-winning South African expat and author Sisonke Msimang, How to Write About Palestine, inspired my two-bit attempt. On the best of days, any foray into political writing is a challenging layup to slamdunk, …
Once a firebrand in the ANC Youth League, an untouchable co-founder in the EFF, to being unceremoniously demoted from Secretary General of the MK party and snubbed from its parliamentary list just 10 months since joining, the life and times of Floyd Shivambu tell the story of a political modus operandi manned by authoritarians, gatekeeping …
In the hullabaloo that the GNU’s first anniversary has stirred, it is perhaps Cyril Ramaphosa’s proposed National Dialogue – dubbed another useless talk shop – that has overshadowed the moment. His silver tongue not notwithstanding, the endeavour has been met with overwhelming apathy and nothing to suggest any fireworks when it has bedded down to …
It’s enough to have one sweating bullets: nearly half of the Mail and Guardian’s news staff face retrenchment. With its legendary investigative journalism record as well as faithfully living up to the moniker, ‘Africa’ s best read,’ the M&G seems to be slowly going under. On what is a raging, tumultuous media landscape, it tithers …
Zwelinzima Vavi must surely be the one cadre who’s parried more long knives than our last three presidents combined. This even though he is foremost a unionist, a disciple of the MDR movement by affiliation, and his conduct has never quite led one to believe he was ever in it for the hotseat. Or the …
‘Pain gives a quality to what is happening that nothing else seems able to give’ counsels the late Desmond Tutu to Antjie Krog in her book Country of my Skull. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has just been handed new information on, amongst others, The Cradock Four and Pebco 3, and the Bishop, back from …
If President Donald Trump’s ‘orchestrated show for the cameras’ was meant to poke President Cyril Ramaphosa in the eye, the SA leader didn’t kick up his chair. Not so much a shit-eating grin at what has been broadly called an ‘ambush’ by the media. And if there ever was a moment that a Buffalo might …
The story goes that when Trevor Manual first rose to a Minister in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, he could barely work a PC. He must’ve been one of the privileged ones as some of his colleagues – fresh from whatever dank the old regime had abandoned them to – might have never seen, let alone sat …
The Buffalo meets Potus but the old SA scuffle never die. Read More »
On the off-chance of catching a newsclip of a measured and presidential Donald Trump, it is still nigh impossible to divorce the image of a property mogul celebrity from the besuited statesman sat at a pristine desk in the Oval Office nonchalantly signing one executive order after another with a smug grin that almost looks like …
No, not because Charlize Theron, to wholesale lampooning, claimed that only forty-four people speak the language. Nor because I’ve mailed a CV out to Wanatu. Orania – the travel doccies go – is a thrifty, quaint little enclave with a charm so disparate from the mainland that the koeksister enjoys more respect than the vuvuzela …
