As SA commemorated the Sharpville Massacre this Thursday, many at Robert Sobukwe’s hometown were up in arms over a seemingly trivial issue: the Pan-African Congress leader’s given name. Born into a working class family in Graaff-Reinet, Sobukwe’s early life was the standard township hardscrabble. Despite these travails, he completed school, ultimately enrolling at the South …
Name Change or Just Tenderpreneurship by Another Name Read More »
Dear reader, finally, I found him! Urbane in loose black pants, a nylon shirt and sky-blue tie on a slow Sunday morning, he, like many who were walking the streets, my offhanded assumption was that he was just on his way to church. Which was true, partly anyway; just another devout believer off to commune …
Following pointed swipes at incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa, former national boss Thabo Mbeki has recently undergone a startling change of heart. A surprising Damascus moment for a man who is usually known to stick to his guns and summarily fire – or klap – those who would challenge his smarts, or the top job he …
In media parlance they call it silly season, which last week reached a crescendo in a desperate swansong before the Constitutional Court. BOSA, Mmusi Maimane’s opaque party – or is it a movement? as well as the Rivonia Circle – in a bid to ease the requisites for participation in this year’s ballot were unceremoniously …
Unimportant Speculation on Manifestos and Coalitions Read More »
Broach the cadre deployment topic even with acquaintances, I’ve found, and expect either an anticlimactic ‘agreeing to disagree’ or to simply lose a friend. Best not to go there. Also, it tends to come with a pervasive affinity to the ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality, which holds that by virtue of clinching a majority vote, the ANC enjoys …
Dear Comrade President His Excellency Bra Cyril Ramaphosa. It is with great offence – by no means directed at you, Mr President, more than the sourgrapes who would dare speak ill of our Commander in Chief – that I labour at this missive. Thanks to their incorrigible slander I’ve been chain-smoking through the ganja plot …
“History’s first draft,” they say of journalism, the so-called fourth estate. Although many such drafts have been written on Colesberg since its days as a vulgar frontier town, these have mostly been confined to colonial history and the traditionally”white” side of town. The stone court house, Kemper Museum, the Anglo-Boer (South African) War…brandy-guzzling bootleggers and …
Debonair in a gleaming Brentwood trouser and designer golfer, Sipho Sandi, sat at his porch is the archetypal township tavern baron. A sharp dresser with an expansive demeanour even at times when things aren’t always as good as they seem. For starters there’s heavy competition from foreign nationals who’ve infiltrated the liquor trade, driving many …
SMMMEs; With or without Government, the Hustle Never Sleeps. Read More »
Around this time last year President Cyril Ramaphosa was readying himself to deliver the yearly State of the Nation address. High on most people’s minds was whether his “fellow South Africans” would hear the entirety of the First Citizen’s (FC) soliloquy without the power going out or the EFF, well, eish, just being the jeering …
SONA 2024; Same story but the EFF weren’t there to hear it. Read More »
“Why race continues to matter in South Africa when it shouldn’t,” reads Sandile Vabaza’s opinion piece heading on the Daily Friend, online publication of the Institute for Race Relations (IRR). That the article puts forth a sensible argument doesn’t spare the author from the barrage of crude comments – many bordering on racist – that …
