Last Thursday, while driving in the English countryside, various authoritative voices on BBC Radio Four provided a counterpoint to the heavy traffic. The topic was, of course, Afghanistan, and the experts speculated that the capital city, Kabul, was in danger of encirclement at some future point, “perhaps even on the anniversary of 9/11”, in view of [...]
Back in the early 1930s, SA, perhaps in echo of those times, had a Hitler-admiring, German-speaking minister of justice. History does not remember kindly, or perhaps at all, the name of Oswald Pirow. Still, in the momentous drama of events in the US following the death of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last weekend, [...]
A handy guide to the mythologising of hero worship is offered in the 1962 Western movie starring John Wayne, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The last line features a minor character who says: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Many years later in 2004, I was in Brussels for a political jamboree when [...]
Last week, two vulnerable heads of governments dealt with foreign policy predicaments in their immediate neighbourhoods with decidedly different results. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing unprecedented crises, several of his own making: his improbable coalition government – which spans far-right, right and moderate centre parties, secular and ultra-religious factions – is unravelling. [...]
Landlocked and impoverished Malawi occupies little attention in this country or the world’s consciousness. Yet this predominantly rural and often blighted central African country has at key moments emerged from the shadows and thrust itself into the spotlight here and well beyond these shores. In May 1970, its dictatorial President for Life, Dr Hastings Banda, [...]
SA received an icy warning of its global dip from The Money Show host Bruce Whitfield, reporting from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shindig. “Davos is depressing — SA is barely here,” he lamented across the airwaves, contrasting the current invisibility with our golden yesteryears when “we used to have a very dominant position”. At one [...]
A terror attack on London Bridge before polling day; opinion polls showing the governing Conservative Party on course for a huge parliamentary majority; the deep unpopularity of the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn; and a desire by voters to end the impasse over Brexit. These are key electoral assets for the incumbent Tory prime minister. The [...]
At first blush, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu and our dethroned former president, Jacob Zuma, have zero in common. The one presides over one of the most successful economies in the world, the other drove ours into a ditch. Zuma is a staunch ally of the Palestinian cause; Netanyahu has made a career out [...]
On Saturday night in Berlin, the capital of chic modernity in Europe and of its largest economy, throngs celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the most menacing and divisive symbol of the Cold War. On November 9 1989, Berlin was ground zero of the four-decade battle between the liberal market [...]
Misery loves company, as the old saying goes. So however depressed the local weather, the stuttering economy or the winning loss of the Proteas exit makes you feel, spare a thought for Sir Kim Darroch. He enjoys the dream diplomatic posting as British ambassador to the United States. But right now, despite residing in one [...]
