There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Salim S. Abdool Karim, Standing up for Science: A Voice of Reason: South Africa’s Chief Covid-19 Adviser at the Frontlines of the Pandemic (Johannesburg: Macmillan, 2023) OUR first authoritative assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic, autobiography, […]
The mutinous Yevgeny Prigozhin seems to have survived his failed insurrection relatively well. While his Wagner Group fighters in Ukraine have been absorbed into the Russian army, their presence in Africa continues unaltered and largely […]
Paul Holden, Zondo at your Fingertips (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2023) STATE capture amounted to treason: not only did it involve massive theft of national resources, but the deliberate subversion of the South African constitution and the […]
Niel Joubert, Whitey: The Rise and Rule of the Shoprite King (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) WE have three supermarkets at our local shopping centre: Woolworths, Pick n Pay and Spar. Although their clienteles are mixed, […]
FOR anyone with links to Britain there has been precious little of which to be proud in the last few years; certainly, since the 2016 Brexit referendum. The English component of the Union has been […]
Al J. Venter, Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African War Correspondent’s Story (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) THE TITLE is Swahili for the water-cooled machine guns of World War One used in East Africa where […]
SPORT and its organisation reflect the society around it, making a mockery of persistent suggestions that sport can or should be apolitical. Thus, in the mid-twentieth century in South Africa it was organised on racially […]
Tendai Biti et al. In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2022) POLITICAL populism, as a contributor to this book suggests, is easy to spot; but hard […]
John Carneson, The John and Ntombi Story: A Memoir of Their Love and Times (Johannesburg: Grasped Image, 2022) AT first sight John Carneson and Ntombi Lukhele might seem an unlikely couple in terms of character […]
I’VE supported West Ham ever since I can recall. Most of my immediate ancestors are from London, my father was born a few streets away from the old Boleyn Ground at Upton Park (his father […]