Posted inBusinessMedia

Celebrating the Consumer Act

It’s taken me a little while, but I’m truly starting to understand and revel in the full implications of the Consumer Protection Act brought into effect in March this year. The introduction of the CPA, along with some personal experiences in the first half of this year have certainly fuelled the fire of my desire […]

Posted inNews/Politics

A lecture on conjecture

Wow. South Africa is at it again. Apparently our beloved country of soothsayers has refined its general problem-solving skills for solving criminal investigations from their armchairs without any real facts or perspective to such a degree that our courts should just pack up shop and ask Judge Judy for a job. Granted, it’s hardly a […]

Posted inLifestyle

Sometimes culture is a load of bull

There are two main points that really get my goat about the current Ukweshwama debacle (Ukweshwama, for those who don’t know, is a traditional Zulu ceremony involving the ritualistic slaying of a bull). The first is the unbridled cruelty to the animal involved, and the second is the most widely used justification for the ritual’s […]

Posted inGeneral

Feminists shoot themselves in the foot

We live in a world where marketing your message is critical, whether you’re selling a commercial product or sanctuary. Even the most inherently good messages can be lost when shrouded with layers of extremism and contrast. The idealist in me hates that fact. The realist in me doesn’t like it much more, but works with […]

Posted inGeneral

What if Hillary was the bomb?

On hearing about the journalist who was banned from attending Hillary Clinton’s SA visit the other day because of a quip about his bag containing an “explosive notebook” when asked whether it contained anything at a security checkpoint, I both giggled (yes, men do that too, it was a very strong manly giggle, I promise) […]

Posted inGeneral

Language as an Allen key or crowbar?

My status updates on the increasingly ubiquitous Facebook platform don’t normally generate much in the way of interesting, meaningful discussion. Admittedly I’m probably to blame for that as I have a tendency to post stream-of-consciousness snippets that nobody understands, for my own amusement, or as a small marker of thought in time. At least I’m […]

Posted inLifestyle

We get robbed by car guards daily

Car guard. Those two words and the encounters they imply elicit a maelstrom of knee-jerk responses in me, some of which negative and some, well, less negative. Fortuitously for purposes of my venting here, these responses appear to follow a fairly easy to map progression, in a fashion I liken to an inverted three-phase traffic […]