There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
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 […]
Helen ZILLE, Not Without a Fight: The Autobiography (Cape Town: Penguin Random House, 2016) HELEN Zille arrived home one night after a visit to a Cape Town township believing her car had been stoned. However, […]
SOUTH Africa’s minister of sport, Makhenkhesi Stofile, threatened war last week. Ironically, he did so a fortnight after 3 000 of the country’s soldiers mutinied in a violent demonstration outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria, […]
BANG in the middle of his budget speech last week, Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan made an unexpected, coded remark. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘is to be done?’ He was using the title of a book […]