A few weeks ago I was waiting in a very long queue at Pick n Pay. There were two young guys in front of me, dressed in overalls and waiting to pay for a loaf of bread and two pieces of chicken.
The one pointed at a newspaper near the till, its h...
Media freedom is one of those topics that its easy to raise a consensus around. For those of us that remember that bad days of apartheid, the consequences of a media held back by a government threatened by the truth needs no exposition.
It is thus...
South Africa is well rid of former police national commissioner Jackie Selebi, sentenced to 15 years for corruption. Corruption is indeed, in the words of Judge Meyer Joffe, "sabotage of the country’s prosperity and ... democracy", but Selebi's mal...
Dear Jeremy,
I am deeply disappointed in the South African Communist Party and in you personally for supporting censorship in the form of a media tribunal. You have lost my respect as an intellectual and as a democrat.
The occasion for my lett...
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has appealed for calm when discussing the ANC's proposed media tribunal and not go on the offensive.
On the contrary we all should, whether we are in and of the news media or not, forcefully resist this attempt...
It is an affliction that arrives seasonally. To those of its victims inclined towards drama it always seems far worse than it really is. However, it is rarely fatal and mostly passes without permanent damage.
No, no, not the flu. I mean the annual...
I despise bullies. Inevitably, my first experience of that was at school. Well I remember being lifted up by my shirt and banged against a school wall while the big, grinning bully and his cronies laughed at me hanging against the wall, shoes danglin...
"It won't take your mom long to get permanent residence," said the immigrations official to Michelle, the Chook's mom, on the phone. "She isn't an Asian." When Michelle, who as the daughter can sponsor her mother to New Zealand told us this story tha...
Aren't we lucky, here in the art world, to have as qualified a moral barometer as Lulama "Lulu" Xingwana, (minister of arts and culture, formerly of agriculture and land affairs) to let us know when we have become bad people. Even more valuably, and ...
The interwebs were buzzing angrily yesterday because of something Bono* said. Bono, remember him? He's the frontman for that famous Irish rock band U2. In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, he suggested that the net should be policed to a c...
