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) [...]
Workers Day, May 1 2022, offered South Africans sharply contrasting images of President Cyril Ramaphosa and leader of the official opposition John Steenhuisen. Ramaphosa had a double indignity heaped on him at a rally at Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg, North West. The obvious injury to presidential pride was his forced removal from the keynote [...]
Perhaps only a tragedian playwright of ancient Greece can do rhetorical justice to the leadership legacy of Nelson Mandela. Sophocles wrote: "One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been." Last Sunday, shell-shocked South Africans, some in the midst of the rubble and disaster of a five-day looting spree which [...]
Historian CV Wedgwood wrote: “History is written backward but lived forward. Those who know the end of the story can never know what it was like at the time.” Very few, even if not present in the infamous Gupta compound in Saxonwold, won’t know the result of the extraordinary testimony at the Zondo commission, offered [...]
The death last week of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose extraordinary long and consequential life was heralded across the world, has occasioned many reminiscences from thousands of encounters with His Royal Highness. For while Prince Philip always walked two steps behind his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, he was usually several paces in front of [...]
When the economy is spluttering at 1% growth it is time to put on the hair shirt, not to go on a drinking binge Visionary leadership is much commented on these days precisely because of its absence. It has almost disappeared from public life and politics, here and everywhere. When you think of Winston Churchill [...]
Jerry Brown, enjoys many distinctions in political life. He is both the oldest (at 80) Governor of California and, 44 years ago, was also one of the youngest incumbents (aged then 36). The gap between his last stint which ended in 1983 and his current tenure which concludes at year end, allowed him to contemplate [...]
There are enough tools to carry out land reform without pulling bricks from of the finely balanced Constitution Apart from hurling abuse at cheating Australian cricketers, one of SA’s most popular pastimes, politically, is looking through the rear-view mirror. Every anniversary, birth and death, from the great and the good to the great and the [...]
