Black Friday arrived on these shores in triplicate last week. First there was the chaotic retail therapy which saw smashed shopping mall windows, crashed e-commerce websites and big bargains as South Africans went shopping. Second there was Robert Mugabe's inglorious end as the 93-year-old despot gave way to a 75-year-old successor with, to be diplomatic, [...]
Robert Mugabe’s inglorious end this week after decades of tyranny defied the outcome to which Thomas More gave voice over 500 years ago. Mugabe like More is Catholic but, unlike the latter, he was no saint. And the Zimbabwean military disproved the More prophesy sola more tyrannicida est –‘death is the only way to be [...]
Fear of being on the wrong side of history shows up again at celebrations around Helen Suzman’s centenary One of the many features of SA today is a fascination with looking in the rear-view mirror, almost to the exclusion of the road ahead. But often, the view backwards is distorted. Tuesday November 7 provided seminal [...]
South Africa faces multiple disasters: a combination of reckless misgovernance and now, with the worst drought in living memory, the Hand of God thrown in for good measure. On the subject of the divinity, the old saw "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad" has been given a uniquely modern South African [...]
We should learn the right lessons and draw the correct conclusions from the extraordinary and well-lived life of Helen Suzman. Exactly 10 years ago, on 7 November 2007, I telephoned Helen Suzman in Johannesburg from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was a resident Fellow at its famous university. I called to congratulate her on her 90th [...]
In 1967, US author Allen Drury wrote a book on apartheid South Africa entitled A Very Strange Society. Fifty years later, and two-plus decades into our post-apartheid story, we have added several new chapters to our national tragedy, though that title remains very contemporary. The strangest part started just shy of 10 years ago: at [...]
