Thought Leader

By Charles Leonard Every year on this day I think of my riot policeman – the one who tried to kill me the day then-president FW de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party and the Pan Africanist Congress, and that he was going to release ANC…

By Guy Chennells This article is in continuation of a debate that I must admit I’ve only partly followed. It’s about race and being South African. If you know what you’re going to say in response already, this is not for you. If you feel a gnawing hunger for an unsure offering, like it’s a…

By Takura Zhangazha The failure of the African Union (AU) to elect a new chairperson for its commission on January 30 points to a seriously divided continental body. Had this been an election based merely on the popularity or campaign skills of the two candidates Jean Ping and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, it would not warrant analysis…

By Balt Verhagen In Who am I? Kopano Matlwa Mabaso chronicles her hopes and bitter disappointments since 1998 when she started high school. This prompted me, a person three times her age, to recount some of my own experiences during the same period when “we were well settled into our new democracy”. Around 1998 I…

By Athambile Masola As a language teacher, I have been following the furore about African languages being axed from schools with great interest. I have been reading and trying not to be cynical about every new article announcing that yet another school will no longer offer isiZulu or isiXhosa in the foundation phase. There have…

It seems politics has become nothing but a crusade in confusion, confusing the very same people who voted politicians into office. Politicians get caught up in the fruitless and wasteful game of politicking while bravely maintaining the lie that they are working for our interests. I must start by saying we need to understand that…

At the recent philosophy conference at UCT in Cape Town, philosopher Callum Scott, from UNISA, presented an intriguing paper – “The death of philosophy: A response to Stephen Hawking” – on the 2010 book by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam Books). In a nutshell, Scott offered a critique of Hawking…

Juju bashing isn’t as much fun as it used to be. If you type Malema into Google, the second suggestion the browser makes is “Malema jokes”. The latest one is that his girlfriend has twins and Malema is wondering which of them is his. I’m not entirely comfortable with such jokes; I know some people…

Ubuntu, like many other words and concepts one comes across at a young age, has been a part of my reservoir of knowledge for so large a part of my life that it is impossible, save with the intervention of hypnotherapy, to pinpoint the first time I heard or understood it. One rarely came across…

As the bank with “green answers” – according to their marketing campaign – I have a few questions for Nedbank. Nedbank has put a lot of effort into creating the impression of being a ‘green’ bank. They have an entire website devoted to the environment, and a range of account options with a green ‘flavour’….