Posted inBusinessGender violenceGeneralMediaNews/Politics

A South African link to Trump’s inner circle

People are trying to figure out Donald Trump’s real agenda. There are big clues in the people around him. Trump appointed Steve Bannon as his campaign manager last year and Bannon is now his chief political advisor and strategist. Bannon is a multi-talented (journalist, naval officer, investment banker and Hollywood producer) white nationalist Islamophobe who […]

Posted inGeneral

Trump’s America: No country for old women

I have managed a monosyllabic email and two cups of tea this morning. Typing this is agony. Now I know that the sun comes up and shines even on the day of the apocalypse. I didn’t know that yesterday. So this is a learning experience. Welcome to America’s 1948, where the sun is shining. With […]

Posted inGeneral

Elaine Salo Is

Once, writing about pregnancy, I mused that the body has its own knowledge, beyond language and consciousness. If you’ve given birth au naturel, you will remember that the body takes over, heaving and contracting, doing things you cannot tell it to do or to stop; and your mind is overwhelmed in helpless agony unless you […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Farewell Cuba

Barack Obama is in Havana tonight. What a sentence. From here in the belly of the beast, surrounded by the army, the army reserve, the navy, the air force, the marines, the coast guard, the national guard, nuclear warheads, stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the National Security Administration, […]

Posted inEqualityMediaNews/Politics

Take it down USA

Nine African-Americans attending an evening Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, US were murdered in cold blood last week. US news outlets say that South Carolina resident Dylann Roof, a young white man, has confessed to the killings. He hasn’t been convicted in a court of law […]

Posted inEquality

Take it down

I know someone who — shall we say — passed water on Cecil John Rhodes’ grave in the Matopos Hills in southern Zimbabwe. The National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare removed its own CJR statue in the 1980s and stuck it behind the building with some rusting tractors. Poor CJR. All he wanted was to […]

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Back to Biko

Hello, cyberpublic. Let us read Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, page 31. “…the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Fear

My Zimbabwean PhD student won’t go with me to the demonstration outside Parliament tonight because he would have to go back to Bellville on the train and he’s heard stories of someone who’s in hospital now from having been beat up on the train. My Zimbabwean friends who work in town just got warned that […]

Posted inNews/Politics

50 First Elections

It’s a terrible movie, but then it’s a terrible world. The one where Drew Barrymore has a head injury — she’s cute and sweet and she’s stuck in the same day over and over again. She doesn’t remember anything that happened the day before, so she wakes up bright and fresh and innocent and appealing […]