There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
The prolific Scottish writer M.C. Beaton (Marion Chesney) described libraries as ‘palaces of dreams’. Looking back over fifty years of working life and four careers, they all had their highlights. But only libraries carried a […]
THREE major human rights problems stand out in South Africa today: an extreme and intensifying imbalance in wealth; the corruption and incompetence that exacerbate this; and violence perpetrated on women and children. The recently released […]
THE EARLY 1990s were a time of acute instability in South Africa; but also of great hope. Structural change was yet to start, but many of the apartheid regime’s proscriptions, such as censorship, were falling […]
THURSDAY 26 June marks the seventieth anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at Kliptown in 1955. A document about which there has been much debate, it is undoubtedly one of the most inspirational […]
THERE is still no definite explanation, political or financial, for the demise of the Rand Daily Mail forty years ago. But on 14 June 1985 the Weekly Mail (WM) was launched by redundant journalists. It […]
ONE hundred days! It feels like a hundred years; and one word sums up Trump.2: chaos. Is this personal, tactical or strategic? Those who know Donald Trump describe him as narcissistic, vindictive and attention seeking […]
WHEN we discuss the strengths and virtues of liberal democracy, that political philosophy now under siege in the United States, it is the permissive freedoms that spring to mind such as rule of and equality […]
IN the three-part drama Shooting the Past by the writer and director Stephen Poliakoff, the largely eccentric staff of a London photo archive of millions of items try to save their collection from destruction. The […]
THE AMERICAN people have not only elected a misogynist and convicted criminal as their 47th president, but a traitor. There can be no other conclusion. This is a man who incited violent insurrection by persistent […]
ANGER stalks the world and seems evenly spread among the generations, although particularly prevalent among men as the crisis of masculinity grows. One would expect in this situation, whatever its genesis, that young charismatic leaders […]