There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
THIS month (November 2009) the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is scheduled to release its verdict on the question of Caster Semenya’s eligibility to compete as a female athlete. It’s a sensitive, although not unique, issue, […]
Mark SHAW, Hitmen for Hire: Exposing South Africa’s Underworld (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2017) WANT someone rubbed out? It could cost you as little as R10 000 in a society in which extreme violence is commonplace […]
IN the closing scene of George Orwell’s brilliant allegory of political revolution, Animal Farm, the workers eavesdrop on a meeting at which their masters, the pigs, are fraternising with the traditional enemy, human beings. As […]
IF you have ever watched what is arguably the BBC’s best-ever situation comedy, ‘Yes Minister’, you will recall the various facial expressions of Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by the Anglo-South African actor Nigel Hawthorne), the […]
THE censorship system of the apartheid era was complex, savagely comprehensive and unwieldy; but full of loopholes. Often it brought fresh meaning to the concept of the absurd: the 1950s customs embargo on Anna Sewell’s […]
WHICH would you prefer: to be jobless most of the time, but able to afford cheap Chinese-made sandals; or employed in a shoe factory that contributes to the economic and social stability of your local […]
THE year is still young, but even the most avid reader of South African news might be wilting. Racism; corruption; crime; crises in service delivery and sports administration; and mayhem on our roads hit the headlines with […]
IS recent South African history a saga of lost opportunities? Historians tend not to ask the perfectly natural question: what might have been? Perhaps it calls for too much speculation, but it is worth considering. Take World […]
IT is difficult to believe that liberated South Africa, fifteen years into its hard-earned democracy, is witness to stone-throwing township protestors facing police rubber bullets and teargas. This year there have been 24 major protests, […]
Hugh MACMILLAN, Oliver Tambo: A Jacana Pocket Biography (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2017) HAD it not been for the Treason Trial of 1956, Oliver Tambo would almost certainly have become an Anglican priest. He was close to […]