Something truly extraordinary is happening in the US labour market. At the beginning of 2010, it was revealed, that for the first time in the country’s history, women held a majority of the nation’s jobs. The dramatic rise of women within the ranks of the gainfully employed shouldn’t be seen as solely an American phenomenon….
When the Zimbabwean parliament voted overwhelming in August 2005 to endorse constitutional amendments that would further restrict private property rights and allow the government to deny passports to its critics, exultant Zanu-PF MPs danced and cheered in the aisles. Several apparently even did cartwheels. Similar displays of vindictive glee had reportedly taken place previous, such…
While Jews agonise over anti-Semitism and Muslims rail against Islamophobia, both of which are supposedly on the rise everywhere you look, remarkably little is being heard on behalf of arguably the world’s most persecuted religious group today, namely Christians. I say “arguably”, because anti-Buddhist persecution in Tibet and Myanmar/Burma is also an unhappy reality. Still,…
So damaging was the fall-out over South Africa’s denying the Dalai Lama a visa when he wished to attend a peace conference a couple of years ago that it was hard to imagine such a blunder being repeated. At the time, it was perhaps the most egregious example of the last administration’s penchant for shloeping…
Some years ago, former president Thabo Mbeki scornfully dismissed the DA as a “Mickey Mouse party”. Even party leader Tony Leon’s caustic rejoinder that Mbeki was heading up a “Goofy government” could not altogether remove the sting from that taunt. Things are looking quite a bit different now. Even Thabo would concede that the DA…
Just using the word “colleague” when referring to Lucky Dlamini comes across now as presumptuous, even hypocritical. When he was alive, he was just the taciturn cleaning staff member who came in once a day to empty my rubbish bin. I barely did more than grunt my perfunctory thanks, half-annoyed at being interrupted. Lucky was…
It was many years ago now that one of the most bizarre and upsetting experiences of my life took place, so bizarre, in fact, that with the passage of time it is hard to imagine how it could have happened at all. It began with a phone call from a police investigator, “requesting” me to…
Part of the challenge of writing for a wider public is resisting being provoked into knee-jerk responses to attacks on what you have written. Sometimes it is OK to simply let contrary viewpoints go by unchallenged, even when they are palpably ill-founded. At other times, though, remaining silent is not an option, and the latest…
Crass and insensitive comments by radio talk-show hosts unfortunately surface from time to time. One of these, brought to my attention in my capacity as anti-Semitism monitor at the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, was in response to reports that one of the World Cup venues had run out of beer. While I can’t cite…
“Jewish author’s estate accuses Rowling of plagiarism” was one of the featured stories in today’s Jewish Telegraph Agency bulletin. According to this, Rowling got her ideas from a 1987 book by Adrian Jacobs (since deceased) entitled The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land. This is not the first time certain people have…
