Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Nelson Mandela International Day is all about mobilizing people, governments, NGOs, and corporations to take steps every day to make this world a better place. The United Nations sent out a clarion call today for everyone to redouble efforts to meet the Mandela Day organization’s 2030 goals. Mandela Day goals Goal 1 – Provision of… Read more.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) gave President Jacob Zuma an ultimatum on Monday: resign by Wednesday or be impeached on Thursday (via vote of no-confidence). True to form, the hopelessly beleaguered Zuma strutted and fretted his case on TV until the eleventh hour and then resigned. No doubt he’s now hoping the sinecure he… Read more.
One of my pet peeves is the person who insists on using the honorific title “Dr” after receiving an honorary PhD. But even more galling is the person who insists on using this title after buying one from a diploma mill. Most galling of all, however, is the person who insists on using this title… Read more.
I feel obliged to begin by confessing that, when it came to reading the works of white authors in Apartheid South Africa, my interest did not extend much beyond those of Athol Fugard. No doubt this is because Fugard didn’t just write provocative anti-Apartheid plays (like his pioneering Blood Knot in 1961); he also defied… Read more.
Here is what I wrote six years ago after South Africa’s ruling ANC dumped Thabo Mbeki in favor of Jacob Zuma as party leader, thereby ensuring an ignominious end to Mbeki’s tenure as the country’s second democratically elected president: It’s an insult to Mbeki’s distinguished career of public service that he’s being so unceremoniously upstaged… Read more.
I am acutely mindful that my commentaries on the growing pains of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are taking on the aspect of flogging a dead horse. This is why I am loath to write yet another one on the following regressive phenomenon that is now unfolding there: African leaders once personified unbridled despotism. Now they’re… Read more.
They should please not choose someone of whom most of us would be ashamed. Our country deserves better. We’re very worried that [Zuma] had relations with a woman who regarded him as a parent; and, although he is very likable, we have to ask ourselves: ‘What is happening in the ANC?'” (Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond… 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.
Just over a month ago, I posted this article detailing some graphic and damningly probative testimony by the HIV-positive woman who claimed that Jacob Zuma (her dead father’s best friend and the man she regarded as her adopted father) had raped her. In his defense, however, Zuma took the stand and testified that although he… Read more.
“I thought: ‘Oh, no! It can’t be, he is on top of me, he is naked, I’m in his house.’ I was just confused. I actually thought it can’t be happening. At that point I faced reality. He was just about to rape me.” I said: “Eh eh (no) umalume [uncle]”. This was some of… Read more.
