For this writer, I imagine South Africa a lot like being the ‘sane’ staff who find themselves tasked with overseeing the goings on of a mental institution. Most days you wing through the motions. The mayhem, noise, the guy who violently mutilates his head against the wall, the woman who swears that she was once …
SA is a joke even though we aren’t really laughing Read More »
The Franschoek Book Festival, to paraphrase a prolific black writer of some repute, is the sort of shindig where you wash the salted crackers down with award-winning savignon-blanc, rub shoulders with respectable men of letters, all the while feeling out of place in this ‘spot-the-darkie festival.’ Apparently the darker hued scribes would rather bluetick (or …
The Rainbow Nation doesn’t mean singing Kumbaya in Paarl Read More »
Emerging from flunkable stints in both the embattled home affairs and a health department in a vegetative state, one never thought anything worth paying attention to would ever escape the lips of Dr Aaron Motsoaledi. Seen as the paragon of a non-performing minister, his doctoral qualification, however, may have spared him from the usual accusations …
Crumbling health, Pepfar and The Donald shows his true colours Read More »
Given the much publicised budget speech differences in the GNU, one half-expected the Finance Minister Minister to serve president Ramaphosa with a sick note on Wednesday, D-day for his much-anticipated appearance. But before the surprisingly composed Enoch Godongwana could brace himself for the moment up rose one Mzwanele Jimmy Manyi, a Zumaite long before the …
Regularly I keep the company of Lino, a dreadlocked Mozambican migrant who’s a tenacious laybuilder and many years my junior. He’s black, doesn’t speak a word of English and his Xhosa is a crude creole of isiZulu mixed with Shangaan, meaning we often have no idea what the heck we’re going on about. But inasfar …
‘Ons fade nie, ons vokof.’ These blunt words speak the spirit of what was Vrye Weekblad – an unpretentious but outstanding rag that flipped the bird at injustice regardless of who was wielding the sjambok. In the 80s doing so ‘in good Afrikaans,’ no less, as editor-in-chief Max du Preez expresses in a farewell column …
As the world was running a fever thanks to President Donald Trump’s unexpected sneeze on Ukraine, South Africa’s Finance Minister, Enoch Gondongwana, was effectively social distancing from his annual fifteen minutes of shine. Chickening out, as it were, from the Budget speech – not so much a ‘sorry comrades’ or an hour-to-midnight family meeting for …
It is only those harrowed to the SAffer psyche who will chortle and enjoy the music in such tense times. Who will mow the lawn, feed the cats, fetch the mail. On the porch, they will daydream of the mom who went too soon, the nameless cats goosing down beneath the marijuana and the nephew …
Before the controversy had degenerated into seed, Wanatu must’ve known that they faced an uphill. In the labour courts they would’ve been seriously up against it. In the immediate court of public opinion, their PR would’ve been viewed as a page straight from the dark ages. By the time the promotional pictures of a lily-white …
On 13 September 2024 president Cyril Ramaphosa unilaterally signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA) despite on-going consultations and seemingly paying scant consideration to members of the GNU. This quickly saw a displeased Democratic Alliance (DA) staging a protest march in November. In no time it also had Afriforum, Solidarity and the Solidarity School …
