Contrary to the popular song by Andrew Lloyd Webber, there has been much to cry about in Argentina. Bad economics, worse governance and a populist president are three headline-grabbers from across the South Atlantic. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner gave, figuratively, the middle finger to international investors and did in Spanish over there from a position [...]
So much wealth and wellbeing was squandered by bad governance and even worse economic policies THIS month three years ago I had an interesting encounter with one of the most senior members of our government. I had just returned from my stint as SA ambassador to Argentina, and I was asked for my views on [...]
"Populism flourishes on conspiracy theories, conjuring up sinister forces seeking to undermine people’s interests" IN AN essay published in late September in The New York Review of Books entitled "Fear", US novelist Marilynne Robinson accused certain extremist strands in contemporary American Christianity of being "unchristian" in that they peddle a noxious cocktail of "ignorance, intolerance [...]
Give the man a Bells — or should that be a cuppa tea? If our dear president drank infusions stronger than his preferred rooibos tea, I guess you would give the man a Bell‘s. Since tea was the preferred metaphor for Gwede Mantashe‘s recent attack on his predecessor, Kgalema Motlanthe, for daring to suggest that [...]
Why did there appear to be such broad sympathy and support for the student cause? On the first night of the Jewish Passover festival, to commemorate the exodus from enslavement in Pharaoh’s Egypt over 5 700 years ago, a famous question is raised. The youngest person at the dinner (seder) table traditionally asks: “Why is [...]
Amid the biggest meltdown in our 100-plus years of mining history, Zuma plucked from provincial obscurity the Guptas’ best Free State friend, Mosebenzi Zwane A David Sipress cartoon in the New Yorker perfectly captures the ambivalence many South Africans are experiencing. It depicts a woman walking down a street complaining to her partner: "My desire [...]
Mosebenzi Zwane apparently has some ethical challenges, knows nothing about mining or oil and gas, but it's all washed away by his fast friendship with the Guptas As the monarch sings in the musical The King and I, it is a “puzzlement”. Whatever your thoughts about the state of our economy and the challenges of [...]
The 'left-wing critics' of both Mandela and Mbeki are now in charge of this country’s economic direction under Zuma When top-seeded Boris Becker lost at Wimbledon in 1987 to 43rd-ranked Australian Peter Doohan, he provided a thoughtful addition to the philosophy of shock defeats. The German tennis ace shrugged it off: "I didn’t lose a [...]
Why was this tiny community of just over 60000 souls being given such exemplary attention? ON SATURDAY Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank penned a withering put-down of Hillary Clinton‘s faltering second try for the White House. He accused her “bloated campaign team” of “putting the moron into oxymoron”. He has a point: in the early [...]
