The general response to South African drug smuggler Janice Linden being executed has been mixed. Some say her crime was not severe enough to warrant the death penalty, but many lambaste her for being part of an industry that ruins people’s lives and being “stupid” to commit a crime in a country that carries the…
I remember the first “proper” science fiction book I read, Arthur C Clarke’s Imperial Earth. I was hooked. Not by the idea of interplanetary travel and colonisation (although that sounded interesting) but by the notion of “what if?” What if we did inhabit other planets or moons? What would the implications be for Earth? What…
I’ve been living in Joburg for six months and I finally had my first JMPD experience! The JMPD is not a fancy golf club (even though they do wear uniforms), but rather the infamous Johannesburg Metro Police Department. I’ve heard the stories and sagas of people being searched without warrants, harassed because they were checking…
My family, being capitalists at heart, have always exchanged presents. The mad shopping mall frenzy of purchasing is intoxicating and stressful, but I’m a good consumer and throw myself into this ritual every December. The decorations! The lights! Buy, buy, buy!
This year feels different though. My father says most gifts are wasteful. He often says stuff like this just to be contrary (I think it’s a Zimbabwean thing), but this time he may have a point.
Dear Diary Today was not a good day. Floyd found out about bloody agents on an interweb computer called the twitter. The twitter is a new evil of the capitalist running dog machinery. It is a klip kliptocr kleptocrisy. These mlungus and coconuts with their white tendencies have hacked the twitter and are pretending to…
Just like the American mafia was founded on Prohibition, today’s Russian and Mexican cartels are based on the creation and distribution of mind-altering chemicals. The profits generated allow them to branch out into human trafficking and arms dealing. But these are sidelines. Far more people want marijuana and cocaine than prostitutes and guns. Just like far more people want alcohol.
I’ve been harassed a few times in my life and attacked by a tik-smoking neighbour once. Thankfully, none of these incidents were too serious. A few nightmares and a trip to the emergency room (tik guy threw me against a steel gate) being the extent of my injuries. I’m a naturally friendly person, but whenever…
A few weeks ago I was waiting in a very long queue at Pick n Pay. There were two young guys in front of me, dressed in overalls and waiting to pay for a loaf of bread and two pieces of chicken. The one pointed at a newspaper near the till, its headline announcing the…
It’s probably Fifa’s fault (as usual), but away from the vuvuzela-soaked stands I found Cape Town Stadium slightly eerie. It is immaculately awe-inspiring as you walk through the gates, a steel behemoth rising where once there was, well, another less impressive stadium. But I wandered around at half-time feeling slightly bereft. There were interminable queues…
A few years ago there was a dinner party conversation topic that came up again and again — how the hell could people love Mo the Meerkat? My friends and I would lambaste how ridiculous and creepy he was. We were all in agreement that he wasn’t clever or funny or cute. Of course, all…
