The first thing I came across on SADTU’s website when I visited it on 18/05/2013 is an announcement on “improvements in the working conditions” of teachers. This particular improvement relates to annual cost-of-living adjustments for educators. This is all well and it is needed, and granted SADTU is a union for teachers and not the…
In the past few weeks of politics in our country, it transpired that politics can be a dirty playground meant not for the fainthearted. Since the dramatic saga hit the news, and still receiving immense attention in popular media, some friends perhaps sensing that I am “mum” about the issue have asked what my reflections…
Every now and again there are vehement political calls from various quarters and “politically conscious” observers for land that was stolen through apartheid colonialism to be given back to its rightful owners. Typically this involves urging, pressuring, and sometimes even heckling the ruling party to somehow effect this land reform at best “immediately” or at…
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is just as guilty of patronage politics as the African National Congress (ANC). Although this statement may come across as a clear logical fallacy, namely the Tu quoque fallacy, colloquially referred to as “two wrongs do not make a right”, it remains important to note that in this instance the appeal…
On the issue of slate politics in the ruling party, perhaps the time has come for the party to consider a policy that limits the reach of this mechanism somehow. This is a matter for ANC members to contend with. As for the ordinary folk, slate politics within the “top six” of the ruling party…
The Roman achievement was colossal. The Romans knew it themselves hence their belief in Roma Aeterna, the eternal city. But as everybody knows, Rome was not eternal and “the best-known fact” about Rome, remarked Arthur Ferrill, is that “it declined and fell”. Edward Gibbon was summing up not just the reign of Emperor Antoninus, or…
Truth never damages a cause that is just — Mohandas Gandhi And so Barack Obama takes the presidency. A congratulatory note to the American people for choosing leadership continuity. We must take this moment to recognise the smooth and painless electoral process that sees Obama with another opportunity to effect change domestically and internationally. Presumably…
“Religion is the opium of the people.” – Karl Marx A good day to you in the name of my holy television set. On SABC 1′s Worker’s Prayer program early this morning, it was well when Florentina’s testimony of a reckless, sluttish lifestyle was used to much profit. Then, in a stroke of spiritual inspiration,…
Geopolitics is generally a complex issue to tackle, mainly because it is highly speculative, with a lot of determinations resting on what each country’s intelligence chooses to tell us. Even more tricky is the fact that each country has strategic interests that are, more often than not, the be-all and end-all of their foreign policy…
