Monthly Archives: April 2015

Ministerial estates – where the lights never go out

True load-shedding would involve the ANC dumping the dead wood of clueless cadres. Is it a contradiction, in these darkened days and nights of load-shedding, to have a light-bulb moment? Actually, you can - especially if you live, as I do, in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. And this has nothing to do with [...]

By |2015-05-21T11:11:13+00:00April 30th, 2015|Eskom, Opinion|0 Comments

Jacob Zuma has missed his Truman moment

Leaders should stop thinking their electorate are stupid and and own up to blunders they make. When he assumed the presidency, he was widely regarded - to borrow a phrase from Helen Zille - as "unfit for purpose". He was relatively undereducated and the product of a corrupt political machine. He was only picked for [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:55:23+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

Maimane facing the challenge of weighty expectations for future success

Next year’s local government poll, and articulating a credible message for it, is the test Helen Zille’s successor will have to pass — and time is limited. Here's the story of two sisters on different ships leaving Nazi Germany in 1938. The one ship arrived in South Africa and the other sailed on to Argentina. [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:53:24+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

My advice to a new DA leader: Don’t follow the path of least resistance

As Karl Marx observed: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please' In May 2007, I stood down as leader of the DA after seven years as its head and, six years before that, as the leader of its predecessor movement, the Democratic Party. Thirteen exhilarating, exhausting and often [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:48:37+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

Logic pushed to back seat as past is reinvented by rage

Logic pushed to back seat as past is reinvented by rage AS OUR local brigades of "Monuments Men" move around SA removing or redecorating symbols from our conflicted past, there’s an old joke from the Soviet Union that has currency. A listener calls up a radio station with the question: "Comrade, is it possible to [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:46:33+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

Lessons from a leader who banned chewing gum

The 'guided democracy' lead by the late Lee Kuan Yew had plenty of lessons — both good and bad — that can come in useful for leaders around the world Nineteenth-century French writer Gustave Flaubert was of the view that "our worth should be measured by our aspirations more than our works". He would go [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:43:07+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, World Politics|0 Comments

Opposite Mandela – Remarks

At the recent Knysna Literary Festival, Tony Leon spoke about his most recent book, Opposite Mandela. There is much doom and gloom in the air, and certainly across the airwaves if you listen to the radio, of South Africa right now. Our currency has crashed by no less than 90 percent since April 2011 measured [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:40:40+00:00April 30th, 2015|Publications|0 Comments

Lost and found in Africa’s rising star

Public service corruption on a grand scale, private sector excellence in the same place It is beyond our darkest imaginings. The act of deranged killer co-pilot Andreas Lubitz — who deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps — strikes fear into every airline passenger. Against this sombre canvas, it probably seems trite to recount [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:30:14+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

Madonsela: The one person Zuma cannot suspend

Bizarre conspiracy theories about the CIA are cooked up because she is protected from executive action I once joked with South Africa‘s nightingale-voiced and beautiful operatic diva, Pretty Yende, that her mother chose her Christian name with commendable foresight. So, with all the shenanigans — from load-shedding to board-shedding and beauticians morphing into diesel providers [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:25:58+00:00April 30th, 2015|Opinion, South African Politics|0 Comments

Politicians cannot indulge in nostalgia as if they’re artists

Politicians cannot indulge in nostalgia as if they’re artists READERS might be familiar with the rueful answer to the old question, "How do you make a small fortune?" You inherit a big fortune! This reminder of multigenerational squandering of old family money or talent has many sad examples. In business, the example of Johann Rupert [...]

By |2015-04-30T05:23:26+00:00April 30th, 2015|Arts & Culture, Opinion|0 Comments
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