Might the ancient Greek myth of Tantalus offer a modern warning to the warring tribes in the ranks of SA's opposition parties? Tantalus, readers might recall, was punished by the gods for sacrificing his son for a feast and was doomed to stand for the rest of his life in a pool of water beneath [...]
Today, barring a huge upset, Emmanuel Macron will be re-elected president of France. However, if polling was always accurate President Hillary Clinton would be in her second term in the US and the UK would be still a leading member of the EU. The election in France revolves in part on how toxic the embrace [...]
Alongside the fading light of Eskom, the refulgent blaze of the ANC’s electoral comet shines far less brightly since last Monday. That, at least, is the one takeaway from the outcome of the local polls of 2021. In ancient Rome, the Etruscans were highly regarded for their ability for reading “auspices”, like blazing comets, and discerning [...]
At the ANC national conference in December 2017, which elected Cyril Ramaphosa as president by a tiny margin, the party adopted a resolution that consisted of two mutually destructive elements. On the one hand it resolved that nationalisation of land without compensation “should be one of the methods used by the state to address land [...]
I was in New York the day after the November 2004 US presidential election. George W Bush’s re-election — by a far wider margin than the polls had predicted — was of immediate interest. However, it was a column by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, published that day in the New York Times, that set out for [...]
US President Donald Trump’s conniptions and conspiracy theorising over last week’s presidential election defeat recall the “we wuz robbed” ringside shout-outs of late Johannesburg boxing supremo Alan Toweel. They also find a slight echo here in the tactics and strategy of the EFF. The party on these southern shores has unavailingly and with more violence, [...]
Peace is a universal desired end and its achievement is as cherished even as the concept remains often elusive. “Peace with honour” is an even better idea, suggesting that its attainment can be founded on principle. It is just a pity that the term is imperishably associated with the man who first claimed to have [...]
Eight months since the current plague emerged from Wuhan, China, we face disrupted lives, shattered livelihoods, a wrecked economy and more to come. This unhappy picture, though, has one silver lining for those who believe in grown-up solutions and global responses to an international crisis such as the novel coronavirus – described as a “once-in-a-century [...]
Freedom Day 2020 was the most baleful in SA’s recent history since we spent it under house arrest. That phantom from our past, ostensibly banished by our 1996 constitution, is back with a vengeance due to a viral pathogen we cannot see, cannot interdict effectively but can, under stringent conditions, delay. And since so little is known [...]
Covid 19 has converted us all into armchair immunologists. So here’s a trick question used sometimes to test aspiring medical specialists: “What treatment is offered by ear in an emergency?” The correct answer: “Words of comfort.” At his best, Cyril Ramaphosa reminds me of a trusty doctor. He might have a lousy diagnosis to deliver, [...]
