That the turnout was paltry did little to dent Unathi Asiya’s goal of someday introducing a solid arts programme to the youth of Colesberg’s Kuyasa Township this past Saturday afternoon. Ideally, not the most promising day because this is when the community bury their dead or honour the ancestors. The Seventh Day Adventists strictly reserve …
Of budding township artists and an unlikely poet Read More »
More than inviting UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese to deliver the 23rd annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, it seems organisers at the former stateman’s Foundation let slip a veiled message for the world: we will do what few countries are not stupid enough to do. The term ‘Palestinian’ …
Francesca Albanese: the woman who will not shut up Read More »
As the inquest into the gruesome murders of Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkhonto – collectively known as The Cradock Four – continues, lobby group Afriforum a week or so ago were calling on the Khampepe commission of inquiry ‘into the delay in investigating and prosecuting apartheid-era crimes to also include “terror” …
ANC “Terror” in the age of inquests and commissions Read More »
With the National Senior Cerificate (NSC) examinations due to officially begin on 21 October, the Spring School gathering held at Colesberg’s Umso High School is a final effort at revision and preparation before the final matric tests. Last year more than 720 000 full-time and more than 155 000 part-time learners sat down to write …
In what is already being dubbed as the most important local government election since 1994, the scramble for Johannesburg – SA’s economic lifeblood – is turning out to be the battle that everybody wants to win. With the ANC’s ever-deteriorating election showing, even opaque organisations are starting to smell blood. And, so clad in disparate …
From a drug-busting, streetwise television presenter in a bullet proof vest, to ActionSA mayoral candidate for City of Ekurhuleni, Xolani Khumalo is hardly the political suit SAffers are used to. Unlike a Dada Morero or Kabelo Gwamada, or any of the prominent mayors that usually have us scratching at our collective pates to ask, “En …
‘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 …
