Death and hypocrisy
UNBRIDLED adulation: that seems to be the default reaction at the passing of any prominent figure closely associated with the ANC. We’ve seen it again recently with the death of Mbongeni Ngema in a head-on […]
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=The universal suppression of women’s rights: Womandla!
IT’S been a grim year. Extremism and fundamentalism have taken a tighter grip on the planet; the conflict in Palestine being yet another instance in which the forces of reason and moderation have been sidelined. […]
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=The betrayal of academic custodianship and the rise of the disciplinary university
Narcissistic, thin-skinned, unprofessional, threatening, intimidating and abusive on social media; with an inclination to create and exploit racial divisions. These are some of the descriptors used by an independent panel chaired by Lex Mpati tasked […]
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=Confronting the geography of apartheid
IT was the most banal of events: fifty years ago, in mid-October 1973, two cricket teams met in the local league in Alexandra Park, Pietermaritzburg. But one of them, Aurora, comprised players from different ethnic […]
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=South Africa: moving towards the illiberal
THE TRADITIONAL categorisation of political ideology and practice occupying a spectrum stretching from left to right is now obsolete. It was always problematic if considered at the point where far right collided with far left […]
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=UDF unites, apartheid divides: the 40th anniversary of a non-racial front
CONSULT a history book and it will probably tell you that the United Democratic Front (UDF), launched forty years ago on 20 August 1983, was the internal wing of the ANC. It is true that […]
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=Looking in a Russian mirror
The mutinous Yevgeny Prigozhin seems to have survived his failed insurrection relatively well. While his Wagner Group fighters in Ukraine have been absorbed into the Russian army, their presence in Africa continues unaltered and largely […]
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=From king of the world to parliamentary outcast
FOR anyone with links to Britain there has been precious little of which to be proud in the last few years; certainly, since the 2016 Brexit referendum. The English component of the Union has been […]
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=SACOS fifty years on: a tale of commitment and betrayal
SPORT and its organisation reflect the society around it, making a mockery of persistent suggestions that sport can or should be apolitical. Thus, in the mid-twentieth century in South Africa it was organised on racially […]
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=Football and other disillusionments
I’VE supported West Ham ever since I can recall. Most of my immediate ancestors are from London, my father was born a few streets away from the old Boleyn Ground at Upton Park (his father […]