‘As a general rule, I am loath to give any attention to the leader of a political party that could not muster even half a percent of support in the 2024 general election.’Thus begins Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille’s brutal, tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to an earlier critique penned by Songezo Zibi in Daily Maverick just over …
On their Facebook page on 19 September, Colesberg’s Umsobomvu Municipality handed over eight RDP houses to beneficiaries, igniting an immediate backlash. The Ou Boks project, initially tauted as a pioneering Thabo Mbeki presidential project in 2006 was aimed at relocating some beneficiaries from Ou Boks – the town’s oldest township – so as to make …
When they won’t talk, check out their social media Read More »
It used to be that townships like Soweto hardly featured on the campaign trail of politicians of a certain hue. It was simply a ridiculous fool’s errand. Definitely not worth it because you’d be lucky if people came out, luckier still if they actually listened and a miracle if any them gave you their vote. …
Along Noupoort’s featureless plains, the Siemens 2.3MW wind turbines loom like a majestic import among the encircling flat-topped koppies. Enormous all 35 of them, almost futuristic surrounded as they are by the usual, unpretentious suspects of sparse shrubbery, uniform matchbox homes and the windpompe on this prehistoric Karoo promenade. At an imposing 99m tall, the …
Scores in the Northern Cape will have little idea that this Tuesday, 9 September, the world will be commemorating International Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Day. Estelle Jacobs is not one of them. Neither is Dr Leanna Olivier. As project manager of the Hantam Community Education Trust (HCET), this is an issue very close to …
Be a laggard around the web long enough and you might wake up a relic. Antiquated, obsolete, convinced that the world’s gone mad and sure that there’s some super ingredient in the stuff both the senile and infantile are eating nowadays. Such is the world I woke up to thanks to signing up to TikTok …
Odd pastors and dancing old men in the TikTok universe Read More »
Who will the ANC have to blame when beset with the inevitable day of reckoning come 2029? That is, its support dips even further, and the mighty Khongolose is the former heavyweight – his best years behind him – and forced to lick his wounds from outside the ring of glory as he agonises over …
How do dialogues and commissions fix the broken? Read More »
The Netherlands, Circa 1942. Hiding in rooms discreetly concealed behind a bookcase, 13-year old Anne Frank and her family communicate in hushed tones, treading about cautiously. Isolated from ordinary life, the young girl takes to jotting down the miseries of that confined hardscrabble into her diary. Meanwhile, the Nazis are rounding up Jewish people like …
Few things will rattle a man into pondering his own mortality than a wary peer ambling through the gate to plead for ‘i-raad.‘ Potion, snake oil, a quick fix – whatever term you give it is a footling concern to the reason that – let’s call him Ghost – is practically ramming down my door, …
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet Oversight visit last month to the Northern Cape may have come across as a rehash of established setbacks from two years ago. Forgive us if this smacks of resentful criticism from one with an axe to grind against the 7th administration, and instead revisit the nostalgia of issues raised at his …
Ramaphosa visits the Northern Cape and life goes on Read More »
