From The Thornveld Sharp Thoughts – Page 4 – Welcome
  • 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 […]

    =
  • 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 […]

    =
  • 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 […]

    =
  • 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 […]

    =
  • 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 […]

    =
  • Up the Luddites!

    BACK in the day, as they say, I was a busy and productive writer: letters to the editor and opinion pieces in the newspaper, articles in journals and chapters in books, and a couple of […]

    =
  • Pretoria and Putin

    IF Vladimir Putin thought his army would breeze through Ukraine to Kyiv and beyond to be received as liberators, he must have been disabused by now. Instead, his name will go down in infamy alongside […]

    =
  • Unpacking Cricket South Africa’s truth commission’s report

    TWO former South African cricket captains obstructed the careers of promising black test players, Khayelihle Zondo and Thami Tsolekeli. Another senior player indulged in racist language, which now forms part of a charge of gross […]

    =
  • A tale of two fires

    THE FIRE that destroyed the Reichstag (German parliament) in Berlin on 27 February 1933 was one of the most significant events in modern history. Blamed on communists, it enabled President Paul von Hindenburg to issue […]

    =
  • State capture report: the ultimate implications

    ON Sunday 20 December last year, a telling two-part cameo played itself out in Pietermaritzburg. Residents of Northdale gathered at a primary sub-station that had exploded the previous Thursday leaving hundreds without electricity in an […]

    =