eParkeni on the 2024 Campaign Trail: Then Came Operation Getout!
Operation Dudula President Zandile Dabula. Image: BBC Africa Eye
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No Amandla Without Data: eParkeni on the 2024 Campaign Trail
Not one to have cold feet around his boarding school accent and is yet to make any outlandish promises around fixing everything overnight, Arise South Africa leader, Mpho Dagada, is not the archetypal South African politician. The 29-year old presidential hopeful’s string of runaway successes hark back to 2013. When fellow first year students at …
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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 …
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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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 – …