Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Like most matches during this year’s World Cup, yesterday’s final between Spain and the Netherlands was distinguished far too much by the referee stopping play because a player was writhing in pain on the pitch, feigning injuries to get free kicks, than by skillful play or, God forbid, scoring goals. This is just one… Read more.
South Africa had a very impressive run during World Cup warm-up matches, which included a surprising win against Denmark. Therefore, the soccer-crazed fans of this host nation could be forgiven their great expectations that their team would perform well when the matches really counted. Alas, this was not to be. For after playing Mexico to… Read more.
The World Cup Today, the soccer World Cup kicks off in South Africa. But you do not have to be a fan of this “beautiful game” to be interested. Indeed, the historical, political, and economic significance of this event is almost beyond measure. Compared with the 2008 Summer Olympics in China, it is at least tenfold. That’s why the matches… Read more.
Congratulations to all South Africans on what was by all accounts “a well-run and highly successful election.” Especially since this stands in stark contrast to national elections on the continent – in places like Kenya, Congo and Zimbabwe – where post-election violence nullified results and forced untenable and unsustainable power-sharing governments on the electorate. Of course, there was… Read more.
Westerns are incredulous by South Africa’s decision to ban the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, from attending a peace conference for Nobel laureates that is scheduled to convene in Johannesburg on Friday. But nobody familiar with recent developments in South African politics should be. A few years ago, communists and other left-wing factions in the… Read more.
In a truly extraordinary development, Gwede Mantashe, the secretary general of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), called a press conference on Saturday to announce that: [T]he party’s top-level National Executive Committee [NEC] has decided to recall the president of the republic before his term of office expires. Then, in a bit of political doublespeak… Read more.
I am proud of the fact that I participated in the US-led international protests during the 1980s that precipitated the end of white rule (Apartheid) in South Africa. And I remember thinking back then that a South Africa ruled by liberated blacks could be the beacon of hope and the land of opportunity for Africans… Read more.
“No good deed goes unpunished” and “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” are two aphorisms that sum up the scandal now tarnishing the reputation of the most powerful woman on television, Oprah Winfrey. Because, less than a year after the January grand opening of her $40-million “leadership academy for girls” in Johannesburg,… Read more.
Last summer, I wrote an article condemning the South African government for its provincial policy towards the treatment of HIV/AIDS, which kills more people in South Africa than in any other country in the world. I condemned the government because, instead of adopting the established pharmacological protocols that have proved most effective, it sent Health… Read more.
The plaintive theme of the 16th International AIDS Conference concerned the increasing incidence of HIV infections amongst women. Indeed, speaker after speaker exhorted women – through commiseration, lamentations and admonitions – to assert greater control over their (sex) lives by zealously protecting themselves against contracting the virus. And they instructed women to prevent this, in… Read more.
