By Mark John Burke Owen is a good friend from my childhood, school and, even later, university years. We had very much the same interest when it came to girls, subjects choices, future dreams and, most importantly, American comedy. At a certain stage this fondness of cheap entertainment included a sitcom of the animated yellow-coloured…
by Bright Simons The enthusiasm that greeted the election of Barack Obama, the first and only American president with an African name, was palpable across Africa. Everywhere you travelled you heard and felt a new wave of positive sentiments about the possibility of a great new era for doing business between Africa and America. One…
Almost exactly three years ago, Jacob Zuma addressed the last ANC rally before the election on April 22 2009, which returned the ANC as ruling party and made him president of the country. He spoke about everything from education to crime before he identified two institutions that required “transformation”: the judiciary and the media. Just…
Few would disagree that the hit fantasy-adventure TV series Game of Thrones is, from a purely aesthetic point of view, an outstanding achievement. Its production values are top notch and the acting and scripting are of a consistently high standard. Certainly, it is a yardstick by which the impressive advances made in television entertainment over…
I sometimes wonder if the constitutional notion of “participative democracy” is not just an impossible, idealistic dream. We are eighteen years down the road since our 1994 elections and the only hard evidence I have of my participation in our new democracy has been making my mark on a few ballot papers. The countless thousands…
By Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh After the DA leader’s first Twitter-related faux pas, describing voters as “supporting the ANC because they were given KFC”, I winced, bit my lip, and continued with my day. After her second slur, depicting Simphiwe Dana as a “professional black” for apparently trading on her race in criticising the Western Cape government’s…
I have fallen into the trap myself: become so outraged by government mismanagement that I wanted to beat them with the biggest stick I could: “It is worse than it was under apartheid!” Unfortunately, this is not what “worse than under apartheid” communicates to most South Africans. It is all too easily read as “better…
What kind of country do we want to live in? Despite the achievements we have made as a young democracy, the persistence of widespread poverty and extreme levels of inequality remain a major threat to social cohesion and nation-building. But how do we effectively and realistically reduce inequality and eliminate poverty? In a recent United…
By Rams Mabote Imagine walking into a butcher shop only to find that it is actually a morgue, in spite of the signage outside. Worse still, how would you feel if you took your car for a service only to realise that the place advertised as a workshop is actually a chop shop? Do you…
What do the racist tweets, e-tolls, the POIB and rhino poaching have in common? Recently they have all been the focus of public outrage. Outrage is a useful thing. It was outrage that saw Jessica Leandra stripped of her endorsements and title, outrage that put a temporary halt to e-tolls, and outrage that has forced…
It was like entering a futuristic cave, where a culture’s history washes over visitors in a ceremony of initiation, making it a pleasurable sensation of assimilating its distinctive perspective on the world. It was dark when we entered, but only momentarily, before a feast of colours cascaded, as if from nowhere, dappling faces and surfaces…
So the PSL season is set to close with another bum-clencher of a finale. The defending champions, Orlando Pirates, enjoying something of an Indian summer when it comes to trophies recently, are set to put their fans (this writer included) through the emotional shredder once more as they go up aga...
Have we lost our way in school sport? To a large extent I believe we have. Let me attempt to explain why. I have, for many years, heard the phrase "high performance". It worried me then and it still does. How can we slot a 14-year-old into a high-performance programme when the maturation and grow...
After a somewhat drawn-out rise in initial adoption, video is used with increasing frequency in the enterprise today. The market now seems to have hit a tipping point, with giant unified communications (UC) vendors getting in on the action. Mass adoption is likely to follow soon, along with signific...
Technological advances are occurring that allow for full integration between communication systems and workflow tools. These advances will engender significant changes in the way companies do business – internally and with all business partners. But an organisation's ability to take advantage of t...
Ian Dewar: @HD I would agree with you that the big problem li...
Ian Dewar: @RubinB. I don\'t believe the child support grant ...
Lyndall Beddy: The President of America, Lyndon Johnson, was worr...
Lyndall Beddy: Zuma makes out justice is too expensive - actually...
Ian Dewar: @Aragorn. Actually I do understand the principles ...
