Poloko Tau should have been sitting at home today, surrounded by his loved ones, celebrating his 42nd birthday. Instead his family and friends will be burying him. He died last Friday, but this week the City Press features writer has been remembered mostly for the work he did as a reporter at The Star, 10 years ago in Marikana. Continue reading “Poloko Tau will be remembered as a journalist’s journalist who was a strong and kind man”
Category Archives: Columns
Fikile Mbalula and the big driver’s licence mystery
Wednesday was supposed to be the big reveal, the day when Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula was going to tell us – and show us – what the catastrophic crisis has been with the production of licences. The story to date is simple. There’s one machine. It’s made in Germany. It’s broken. No one is ableContinue reading “Fikile Mbalula and the big driver’s licence mystery”
Lindiwe Sisulu may be a perfect fit for RET demagoguery
Last Friday, Lindiwe Sisulu penned a scathing retrospective on the state of the country; the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots and the desperately high levels of unemployment. Which is all very well and good. It should be said. It should be shouted from the rooftops. It should be discussed in shebeens, overContinue reading “Lindiwe Sisulu may be a perfect fit for RET demagoguery”
SA forced into playing ‘Survivor’
The first week of the new year has been a humdinger. It started with the funeral of Archbishop Desmond Tutu last Saturday, with the arch becoming the first person to be aquamated (the ecofriendly way of getting cremated) after lying in state in the cheapest coffin available – as his final wish. That was aContinue reading “SA forced into playing ‘Survivor’”
We could all do without any Nkandla reverting – of any sort – in 2022
The book’s ambitiously called Jacob Zuma Speaks, but it’s actually what three prominent RET interlocutors think he said, reinterpreting those golden words for a post-pandemic world, or high noon of the New Dawn.
The ‘Ivermectin Karens’ are increasingly being joined by the equally virulent ‘RET-istas’
Corporate South Africa is starting to do its bit too, following on from universities.
Grinch Boris Johnson has stolen our Christmas with UK placing SA on their travel red list
The true tragedy in all of this is that there’s no vaccine for wilful stupidity.
A new season of possibility is being weighed down
This week was also the final instalment of the November 1 local government elections as the new councils began voting in their office bearers and metaphorically getting down to work.
The competence of the police needs to be questioned
If the little film clip shows us anything, it is that real life is a lot grittier, brutish and more ambiguous than a Hollywood police procedural.
An entire generation in South Africa is growing up never having known a life without load shedding
We’re now in our 14th year of rolling blackouts, which De Ruyter wants us to call load shedding, for without it we’d be really up shit creek without a paddle, apparently.
Kevin Ritchie 