Endorsing war criminals
HULLABALOO: it’s a word often applied to South African politics – and with good reason. In the year in which Jacob Zuma should relinquish the presidency of the African National Congress (and, much of the […]
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Uncle Kathy’s legacy and South Africa’s second liberation struggle
ONE by one they gradually disappear from national political life. Ahmed Mohamed ‘Uncle Kathy’ Kathrada died on 28 March leaving behind just two fellow Rivonia trialists from 1964, Andrew Mlangeni and Denis Goldberg. And with […]
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Tearing up the post-war settlement
IN a modest personal archive I have two particularly prized documents: a British national identity card (discontinued 1952) and a ration book (food rationing ended in July 1954). But as a product of the post-1945 […]
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Conspiracy theory and truth
THE beginning of each year raises the prospect of anniversaries, commemoration and appropriate reflection. Amongst many, this one will see the centenary of the sinking of the Mendi (21 February), the fortieth anniversary of the […]
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The present as a mirror of the past
BOOKS on South Africa’s recent history continue to roll off keyboards and printing presses, including a recent spate of memoirs and analyses of Mkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress […]
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Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa: Essays and Interviews on Higher Education and the Humanities
John HIGGINS, Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa: Essays and Interviews on Higher Education and the Humanities (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2013) THIS is an unusual book: title and sub-title could be reversed, yet […]
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Marginalised thinkers in South Africa’s liberation struggle: reflections at St Alphege’s
THIS series of sermon-length reflections was given at St Alphege’s Church in Pietermaritzburg during 2016 encouraged by the Rector, Janet Trisk, to whom the writer extends his gratitude and thanks. Its focus was on the […]
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Liberal democracy under siege
POST-TRUTH (or post-factual) politics is term of the year according to Oxford Dictionaries. Sceptics might question when politics was ever about truth while history shows that the ascent of every totalitarian ideology, right or left, […]
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Student, Comrade, Prisoner, Spy: A Memoir
Bridget HILTON-BARBER, Student, Comrade, Prisoner, Spy: A Memoir (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2016) WE are reminded by Timothy Garton Ash, journalist and academic expert on central Europe, that ‘the key to betrayal is trust’. And […]
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‘History will absolve me’: death of a revolutionary
FIDEL Castro was the archetypal revolutionary − beard, military fatigues and cigar were glamorous left-wing symbols of the 1960s. At the age of thirteen he organised a strike amongst his father’s workers and during the […]