Four years ago this week SA was burning, the state apparatus caught so unawares that our nation’s finest could only haplessly look on as businesses were looted, torched and some 354 people lost their lives in the bedlam. Bheki Cele, the cowboyish Minister who’d popularized the buddy cop ‘shoot to kill’ was seemingly out of …
If you thought Donald J Trump is the big kahuna, you obviously have been paying scant attention to his former geeky sidekick. Elon Musk, the cantankerous brainiac, MAGA benefactor, and once-celebrated other half of Washington’s most famous bromance has – since the much-publicised first visit with his son to the Oval Office – left the …
Where at eParkeni we tend to find ourselves ambling on the ordinary side of things, today we’re constantly looking over our shoulder. That’s the price to pay when you’ve overstepped the line. Strayed into the underbelly. In a trap house among drug pipes, penknives, addicts, – the proverbial wrong crowd, the unnerving side. Where the …
The Higher Education and Training Minister Dr Nobuhle Nkabane would’ve been utterly tone-deaf if she expected her proposed 2025/26 budget vote to pass without at least several parties registering their dissenting ‘nay’ this Tuesday (1 June) before the National Council of Provinces. Earlier that day, the Democratic Alliance (DA) had ‘opened a criminal case against …
Minister Nkabane in hot water as SETA graft continues Read More »
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent firing of Andrew Whitfield suggests a veiled personal acknowledgement that time may not be on his side if he wishes to effectively carry out the in-house mandate placed on him by the CR17s eight years ago. Furthermore, the sacking of said Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry might indicate that the …
Ultimatums, U-turns and the search for David in the GNU Read More »
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 …
