Corona Virus

There’s more chance of seeing the Easter bunny than relief funds reaching victims

This past weekend saw Christians and Jews celebrate Easter and Passover respectively, two of the principal holidays in both religions’ calendars. Easter of course is the post-crucifixion celebration of the miracle of the resurrection, while Passover celebrates the exodus from the enslavement of pharaoh in ancient Egypt, delivered in part by God visiting 10 deadly [...]

SA should insist the UK changes its ludicrous Covid travel curbs

The Venn diagram, where public health imperatives and political needs intersect, is opaque, if not a mess. It is the meeting point between poor policies and arbitrary decisions. South Africans found plenty to justly criticise about government overreach in the 16 months since the country was first placed under lockdown on March 26 2020. The [...]

By |2021-08-04T07:13:56+00:00August 4th, 2021|Boris Johnson, Corona Virus, Cyril Ramaphosa, Opinion|0 Comments

Stop trying to hide your failings with euphemisms, weasels

This week’s standoff in Nkandla will tell us a lot about who we are as a country. It will speak volumes on where we stand on the rule of law and equal treatment of all citizens, and how even-handed the state and its agencies will be in applying the adage that no-one is above the [...]

Why persist in failure when solutions exist?

At the end of May, previously vaccine-starved SA faces a curious paradox: the supply of inoculations against the deadly coronavirus vastly exceeds demand. At least in theory. This strange dilemma is almost entirely explicable because the government, in light of so many demonstrable serial botch-ups on this front, insists on centralising and nationalising the broken [...]

Have you no sense of decency, Mkhize? Oh, how a mighty reputation has fallen

Eventually, after four years of unchecked recklessness which not even popular US president Dwight Eisenhower could interdict, US senator Joseph McCarthy was undone by one killer question. He provided posterity with the synonym for scapegoating individuals for disloyalty usually involving Communism, and in his case for making often unsubstantiated accusations involving the so-called “Red Scare”. [...]

Be worried, ANC. You’ve failed on jabs and jobs and the local polls loom

Local elections anywhere can often lead to false readings of the national picture. Such an error here in the local government polls in 2016 prefigured the national decline of the DA three years later in the general election in 2019. Many will remember how — against all expectation and for what passes as “informed commentary” [...]

Don’t blame ‘vaccine apartheid’ as you sleepwalk through pandemic, Cyril

Using the old South African trope of eliding the 27-year-in-office government from any blame or accountability for its missteps was given a whole new meaning on Monday. The usual all-purpose, all-weather ruse of blaming apartheid is more challenging in respect of the novel coronavirus which only took root here last March, almost 26 years after [...]

By |2021-03-31T08:36:56+00:00March 31st, 2021|Corona Virus, Cyril Ramaphosa|0 Comments

How can SA swallow Cyril Ramaphosa’s big whoppers?

In 2011 Cyril Ramaphosa added to his personal fortune when he secured a 20-year deal, via his Shanduka Group, to run all 145 McDonald’s restaurants in SA. In 2016 he sold his franchise rights for “an undisclosed sum” to a Middle Eastern company. No doubt the president still has a fond attachment to junk food’s [...]

Despite his promises, Cyril’s Covid comedy of errors shows few signs of a happy ending

Cyril Ramaphosa’s day on Monday was appreciably better than the ones preceding it. He could go on national television, the risibly termed “family conversation’” as a late day Father Christmas. He was flushed with excitement after his visit to Johannesburg Airport to receive a million batches (a small fraction of our need) of the long [...]

By |2021-02-03T06:51:28+00:00February 3rd, 2021|Corona Virus, Cyril Ramaphosa|0 Comments

Can the courts rescue us again from government malpractice?

January 26 revealed stark contrasts for two nationalist leaders as their countries and the world enter the second of perhaps endless years of the coronavirus pandemic. However, there was something a little arch about African nationalist Cyril Ramaphosa’s virtual appearance that day at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos Dialogues. He railed against what he [...]

By |2021-01-29T06:43:32+00:00January 29th, 2021|Corona Virus, Cyril Ramaphosa, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma|0 Comments
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