The previous decade was rough, at many levels. This new decade, the 2010s, brings some hope. However, the risks remain on the upside -- politically, globally, personally and so on. The 1990s were said to be a lost decade -- Adam Roberts thinks the 20...
The "condition" of women and girl children remains repulsive. This is an indictment to humanity as a whole, given that the overall human condition itself is precarious. In her incomparable novel, Changes, Ama Ata Aidoo brilliantly captures the critic...
The world we live in remains a disturbingly dangerous and very fragile place, largely because of our own making. Amin Maalouf opens his provocative book, In the Name of Identity, with an analogy that may be worth reproducing for this polemic. Maalouf...
There are many things that Africans do which give Africa and Africans a bad name or rather there are things that folks with black skin do which tarnish the image of those with black skin. However, as one of the greatest pan-Africanists ever alive -- ...
A world-renowned scholar of public policy, Yehezkel Dror, recently reemphasised the point that policy and politics "closely interact, often overlap, and in part cannot be separated even analytically". This seemingly obvious point, with far-reaching i...
One of the most powerful texts ever written, The Communist Manifesto, opens with a very instructive statement: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". This statement still holds and will probably hold for ano...
In a timeless collection of African short stories, folk tales and poetry, edited by Barbara Nolen, the poem titled The Moon succinctly captures what this polemic is about. Let me reproduce the said poem:
"The moon lights the earth
It lights the e...
Noam Chomsky, an eminent scholar and activist, in his celebrated Profit over People reflects that: "The first great experiment was a bad idea for the subjects, but not for the designers and local elites associated with them. This pattern continues un...
Martin Luther King Junior, in one of his most powerful sermons ever -- the one delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Christmas Eve of 1967 -- stated the obvious but critical that “we must either learn to live together as brothers, ...
Many thinkers, ranging from as far back as Plato and Aristotle to as recent as Hannah Arendt, spent inordinate amounts of time trying to make sense of the world we live in. With similar intensity and dedication, pioneering psychologists such as Sigmu...
Dr Vusi Gumede holds a PhD in economics, among his other qualifications. He has worked for the South African government for about 10 years, as an advisor, economist, analyst, etc. Prior to that, he was in the academic/research environment. He has remained in the academic/research environment, including having been a visiting scholar/fellow for various universities abroad and other international/overseas institutions, lecturing at the Graduate School of Public and Development Management at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, publishing in international and South African journals, contributing chapters in books, authoring working papers and policy briefs, and so on. Dr Gumede serves in a number of governance and advisory structures, including as a Trustee for the Southern Africa Trust. He is featured in various platforms, such as Who’s Who of Southern Africa and in the American Biographical Institute’s Great Minds of the 21st Century as well as having been hosted by the Institute for African Development, at Cornell University, as a Distinguished Africanist Scholar and listed by Mail and Guardian as one of the 300 Young South Africans to Take to Lunch. Yale University, in United States, recently welcomed Dr Gumede as a 2009 Yale World Fellow whilst the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa appointed him as a Research and Editorial Advisor.
