Posted inGeneral

#FeesMustFall – Technology innovation income can fund university students

The National Development Plan (NDP) identifies education and innovation as fundamental contributors to South Africa’s development by way of addressing poverty and inequality challenges in society. The NDP goes a step further, in recognising that universities produce new knowledge and find new ways in which to apply existing knowledge. There are very bold (but achievable) […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Black consciousness and Nazism, really?

After two days following the postings generated by Thorne Godhino’s article, “With friends like these, does black consciousness need enemies?”, I feel I must now confess to an unfulfilled anticipation on my part that someone (why not me I am not sure) would make a particular intervention in this important conversation. Before I get to […]

Posted inEqualityNews/Politics

South Africa’s Weimar moment?

What motivates a young black student leader — and we’re not talking here of a self-hating Uncle Tom-like figure but of one well to the left of Malcolm X — to fulsomely declare his admiration for Adolf Hitler? It is surely common knowledge that extreme anti-black racism was an inextricable part of the Nazi ideology. […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Bloody nose for Wits BDS activists

It is surely a measure of my willingness to suffer martyrdom for my faith that I was prepared to endure ninety minutes of ghastly squawking at last night’s jazz recital at Wits. The Daniel Zamir Quartet, comprising four Israeli musicians, was to play in the Great Hall, and it was essential that there be a […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Israeli pianist’s performance disrupted by Wits students

On the evening of March 12 2013 an Israeli-born pianist’s performance to a full auditorium at Wits was disrupted and abruptly ended when anti-Israel protestors, which included members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Wits Student Representative Council (SRC) and the Muslim Students Association repeatedly broke into the auditorium. Yossi Reshef is a world-renowned pianist, […]