There is something terribly wrong about peer-reviewed scholarship and about academic publishing in general. It resembles an exclusive club of knowledge production where new knowledge is circulated among an elite group of scholars who confirm each other’s prejudices and biases and then pat each other on the back. In some ways, once new knowledge is…
I am in the final stages of research and writing a paper on memory which I expect to submit for peer review and publication early in the new year. This paper has proven most difficult to complete, least of all because I started doing research about eight months ago — at the beginning of a…
What’s in a word? Quite a lot, sometimes, and not a helluva lot other times. But who’s to say? Several years ago, one of my dearest of friends, AGRB, was accused of being a spy for the apartheid state. I knew that the accusation was baseless, so did most of our colleagues in the media….
I have always tried to keep this column free from personal gripes and bickering. However, the last post I wrote (Meaningless mutterings about the University of Stellenbosch) drew the attention of people at the university’s Gericke library who opened up access to resources for me. I sincerely hope that they will not get into trouble….
I have been spending my days at the University of Stellenbosch’s main library where I work on job applications — a full-time occupation — and do research. I get a free ride from Athlone to Stellenbosch and back every day and try to make the most of it. The campus is a pleasant and seemingly…
A little more than a week into my stay in Cape Town, I have encountered a rich and diverse range of apparently new foreign social influences in the city. In the first week I have met a range of people from South Asia, Congo (Brazzaville), Malawi, England, Zimbabwe, the People’s Republic of China and from…
I arrived in Cape Town last Friday after spending 14 years abroad. Setting aside larger socio-economic matters (without minimising any of them) I have been pleasantly surprised over the past few days by some of the minor infrastructural changes and improvements in this majestic city. I have been especially impressed by the efficacy of banking,…
“War … is hell,” observed a famous US soldier, William Tecumseh Sherman, in 1879. If there is any truth in Sherman’s observation, the US seems to be descending into a hell of its own making. The signs and symbols appear everywhere; from the streets of towns and cities, to the schools and on television. One…
For reasons explained elsewhere, I have been sorting through my personal possessions and shedding most of it in preparation for relocation to South America. Among these possessions are books that I have been accumulating for more than 20 years. Getting rid of more than 2 000 books is, as I have come to learn, quite distressing….
I want to make a small contribution to the discussion around the (im)probability of Trevor Manuel being appointed as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Parenthetically, this piece was originally written a week ago and was sent back to me last Friday for shortening. So, things might have happened in the meantime which…
