Pliny the Elder once wrote there’s always something new out of Africa. He could well have been referring to the Zondo Commission on State Capture where SAA Board member Yakhe Kwinana held an entire country transfixed by her answers on Monday and Tuesday.
Category Archives: Columns
Tito Mboweni handling Munusamy outcry with same nonchalance as criticism of his cooking
In typical Tito Mboweni style the issue was done and dusted by Wednesday night – openly and unequivocally. Ranjeni Munusamy, explained his spokesman, had been appointed under the minister’s prerogative as stipulated in the ministerial handbook. So there.
Senekal murder: Keeping quiet just plays into the hands of the unrehabilitated racists
It started with a scripture reading and a prayer – and ended up with a police van being upended and torched. More than 1000 people turned up to protest at Senekal in the Eastern Free State earlier this week, ostensibly to show support for the family of Brendin Horner, the young farm foreman who was beaten to death and then strung up on a pole last Friday.
Umkhonto vets under fire from Mr Fixit
The news from the front for the uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association doesn’t make for good reading this week. After marching on party headquarters, Luthuli House and then the Gauteng premier’s office earlier this week, to demand that Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula be fired, they found themselves wilting under a furious counter barrage.
Upcoming US elections: Two geriatric white men vying for control of the last superpower
This week, after Trump’s herculean battle to avoid releasing his tax returns, the New York Times pulled off a journalistic coup akin to SA’s Gupta-leaks, revealing just why the Orange Man in the White House has been so desperate to keep them sealed.
A week of some spectacular sense of humour failures
This has been a week for some spectacular sense of humour failures but then again, this is South Africa and it has always been thus. There’s nothing more humbling than having to explain the punchline of a joke, especially when people resolutely don’t get it.
Heritage Day is the most innocuous public holiday you can imagine
It’s Heritage Day on Thursday – or National Braai Day if you like. It’s the most innocuous public holiday you can imagine. Except in South Africa – which declared it in the first place.
Clicks hair ad debacle was always going to be too much of a low hanging fruit to dismiss
After a five-month long hiatus from the politics of spectacle – if not the politics of greed, the Clicks hair ad debacle was always going to be too much of a low hanging fruit to dismiss. Just why anyone could ever have allowed the massively insensitive, hurtful and stupid Tresemme ad to pass in the first place is astonishing.
Nathaniel Julies should be enjoying spring today but instead his loved ones will attend his funeral
Nathaniel Julies should have been looking forward to spending what is forecast to be a warm Highveld spring day today – instead his family will be burying him. He was shot and killed by police 10 days ago. His crime? He didn’t answer a police officer’s questions apparently.
Government distrust leads to fake news and fear
Fake news and fear area heady mix. We saw what happened just before March 27, nary a toilet roll to be had. On Tuesday afternoon, we had the same thing all over again. Queues mysteriously forming outside bottle stores like the secret signal for an impending zombie apocalypse – “the president will speak tonight; he’s going to close the bottle stores…”
Kevin Ritchie 