Misery loves company, as the old saying goes. So however depressed the local weather, the stuttering economy or the winning loss of the Proteas exit makes you feel, spare a thought for Sir Kim Darroch. He enjoys the dream diplomatic posting as British ambassador to the United States. But right now, despite residing in one [...]
During an English heat wave, I recently escaped London to lose myself in the bucolic Kent countryside near the picturesque town of Westerham. I was one of many Winston Churchill latter-day pilgrims on a visit to his country home at Chartwell. This was where he lived or visited for more than 40 years from 1922 until [...]
In 2014 Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens went to Moscow. He was in search of an answer to the question why Vladimir Putin was, in the teeth of his weak economy and restive populace, doing such apparently risky things as invading neighbouring Crimea and threatening the states in Russia’s “near abroad”. The best response he [...]
The apparently reckless US president has mastered the art of blurting out falsehoods - particularly in the witness box Here’s a teaser as political enthusiasts absorb the results this morning of the hugely significant midterm elections for control of the US Congress. What is the difference between embattled local home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba and [...]
Some years back, one of his harassed employees said of publicity -hungry Rudy Guiliani -then Mayor of the Big Apple – ‘the most dangerous place to stand in New York City is between Rudy and a microphone’. This week I discovered the truth: the most dangerous place to stand in New York City is basically [...]
The fallout from Trump’s Twitter land bomb suggests something seriously amiss at our Washington outpost. There was the predictable part of International Relations Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s reaction to the Twitterstorm that US President Donald Trump unleashed last week on the vexed debate about expropriation without compensation. At her monthly media briefing on Monday, Sisulu said [...]
“Resilience!”. That’s what two business mavens advised me was the secret sauce which allows South Africa to power on. Even with blackouts from Eskom and other daily travails from our failing state. “Africa’s grocer” as resilient Shoprite Checkers is dubbed displayed some of this sauce, not on its aisles, but in its annual results published [...]
Personable, affable Ramaphosa offers intangibles in a country that desperately needs to lure the sceptical dollar Two weeks ago in Cape Town, a few days before Donald Trump blew up the meeting of the US’s closest allies at the Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Canada, I had the privilege of introducing a very different [...]
In the face of a murderous Assad and possible war in the region, our response has been tepid and fearful Two events of global significance occurred this week. On Tuesday, in the US, President Donald Trump signalled his decision not to apply a further waiver on sanctions against Iran, thus resiling from the nuclear deal and [...]
President’s enemies in the ANC probably decided not to hand opposition parties the gift of an indebted leader Like pupils at a Montessori School, all the dramatis personae in last week’s long-running parliamentary no-confidence saga — the eighth such motion to date in an eight-year presidency — against Jacob Zuma could award themselves a gold [...]
