By Gcina Ntsaluba Cape Town was a bit of a buzz this week with celebrations to mark the 30-day countdown to the kick-off of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Even the mayor, Dan Plato, showed up at the celebrations to share the spotlight with local artists, ...
Examine the latest available Human Development Index (HDI) figures -- a measure of education, life expectancy and standard of living -- and you will find that the 2010 World Cup hosts are ranked 129 out of 182 UN member states. Or a whole 19 places b...
So I'm miffed that I didn't get to speak at the London Book Fair thanks to that bloody volcano, known in South Africa as Ekkisvokkengatvol. But there's a silver lining to this particular ash cloud, at least for a cold, windblown piece of rock in the ...
If there is no global warming then it is business as usual, right? We should remove any barriers to economic growth and dismiss the consequences. What I hear in the constant refrain from those that either dismiss or downplay global warming is that we...
There's a girl in the tourist office dressed in a tight pink frilly uniform. She's 21 years old and having a busy day in Orania. Her father John is one of the town's official tour guides and he's set to show us the pecan-shelling factory, the bottle ...
"Hello ma boy! Hallo ma boy!" Such a uniquely South African expression. The fact that we're watching a man lovingly telling this to an enormous male lion that could kill him in seconds if he felt like it -- well, that's just part of life in amazing (...
I've just returned from a trip to Victoria Falls -- my first visit to Zimbabwe. And although it's very much sheltered from the rest of the country's meltdown, the signs are still there -- each day we saw weary locals bringing back bread loaves and sa...
Looking on the web for some info about Zimbabwe (I'm visiting the Victoria Falls in a few days time), I stumbled across an article dated the 12 December in the Zimbabwean state-owned propaganda machine The Herald about how that beleaguered nation int...
The ailing US economy and collapse of leading financial institutions have driven global markets into a collective panic. The ills of globalisation are manifesting themselves in a most spectacular fashion. The interconnectedness of world economies is ...
Marshall McLuhan predicted a Global Village of interdependence based on new communication technology in the 1960s. Since then the concept has taken on new connotations with the advent of the internet and its assumed ubiquitous. However, the negativ...
