The Durban moment fifty years on: hope as revolutionary force
AT the head of the march of 2 000 workers was a man holding aloft a red flag. This was Durban fifty years ago on 9 January and the flag was simply a warning to […]
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=The making and shaping of history: the death of Dag Hammarskjöld
NEARLY ten years ago I was fortunate to review for the Witness Susan Williams’ brilliant book based on her research into the death of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in the crash of flight […]
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=Then, UKZN … and now, UCT
THE CURRENT standoff at University of Cape Town, brought to a head by the vice-chancellor and chair of Council’s apparent economy with the truth with Senate about the departure of a member of the executive, […]
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=Nuclear Armageddon
IT’S exactly sixty years since the Cuban missile crisis ‒ known to Russians as the Caribbean crisis. The climax lasted thirteen days and historians judge it to be the closest the world has come to […]
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=A country run by thugs
FEW people outside Tshwane (Pretoria) will have heard of Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville. But it recently, and surprisingly briefly, hit the headlines when a neo-fascist vigilante outfit calling itself Operation Dudula (force out in Zulu) […]
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=From Georgian to Elizabethan and now Carolean
ONE does not need to be an ardent monarchist, or even a very tepid one, to recognise the significance of the end of the 70-year-long reign of Elizabeth Regina. Its events have framed my life […]
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=State capture report … what next?
POST-APARTHEID South Africa has produced some first-class heroes. Two of them are former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and current Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. It was Madonsela’s work investigating the corruption of Jacob Zuma’s administration that […]
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=Count me out … the census that wasn’t
APPARENTLY, earlier this year South Africa held a decennial national census. Well, so we thought. In tune with the times, I registered us online and identified our house on Google Maps. Then, in spite of […]
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=Arguments for the unelected
AND now for something completely different as Monty Python impressed on us back in the late sixties. Indeed, I never imagined that I would ever write anything under this heading, but as John Maynard Keynes […]
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=Press freedom in South Africa
THE LATEST report from Reporters without Borders (RSF) provides encouraging reading for South Africans. Of 180 countries surveyed, we come in at 35; a tribute to the work of journalists and robust constitutional protection. But […]