Monthly Archives: June 2022

It’s when the moderate centre is quiet that extremists flourish

There are a lot of reasons right now to read or reread the works of Canadian author, Margaret Atwood. Her 1985 theological dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, recently brought to the screen as a miniseries, obtained fresh urgency in the light of the extraordinary US Supreme Court decision last week to remove the constitutional right to [...]

Cyril the Silent is reminiscent of National Party ‘reformists’ during apartheid

“The rest is silence” were the last words of Hamlet shortly before his death and the end of the epic play by William Shakespeare. Could this be the political  epitaph for the wounded presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa? Like the Prince of Denmark he is a figure of hesitancy and indecisiveness on one hand and a [...]

The scandal surrounding Cyril has opened yet another gate

At the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival, I watched a fascinating interview with mega-bestselling author (320-million books sold to date) Jeffrey Archer and local radio host John Maytham. The most interesting part of the discussion with the spry-looking 82-year-old author was his description of his daily work routine: at an age when most in his cohort [...]

After succeeding Meyer Kahn, Cyril Ramaphosa failed to take heed of his wisdom

Meyer Kahn, who died in Johannesburg last week, was described by a close friend and business colleague as “an ordinary man possessed of quite extraordinary abilities”. That handsome tribute to a business leader and former executive chair of SA Breweries, who with CEO Graham Mackay co-piloted SAB (later SABMiller and now merged into AB InBev) [...]

If I were the ANC I’d be a little concerned about my ties to UMK

Dealing with individuals sanctioned by the US can be hazardous. This is the lesson Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends are discovering anew since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and swift and crippling sanctions imposed against them by the US, UK and EU. During the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival I interviewed, via video link, the [...]

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