'Insert the topic of billionaires in a book title and you have a seller'', is the view of Jeremy Boraine, publishing director at Jonathan Ball Publishers. Indeed. Of the top five bestselling titles in SA right now, three of them deal with that tiny subset of local billionaires, the Afrikaans super-rich. The Stellenbosch Mafia by Pieter [...]
At the ANC national conference in December 2017, which elected Cyril Ramaphosa as president by a tiny margin, the party adopted a resolution that consisted of two mutually destructive elements. On the one hand it resolved that nationalisation of land without compensation “should be one of the methods used by the state to address land [...]
In the heyday of Die Burger newspaper and the National Party (NP) — for which the publication served as both house journal and chief cheerleader — their influence was consequential and often baleful. Posterity attributes to long-time Die Burger editor the late Piet Cillie the quote: “We had to practise apartheid to prove it could [...]
There are several reasons why Venezuelan polymath Moises Naim claims the attention of posterity. He served as the minister of trade and industry in his homeland when that country was the richest in South America. Afterward, he edited prestigious journal Foreign Affairs and along the way was an executive director of the World Bank. In [...]
