A core task of an ambassador is to put the best gloss abroad on challenging aspects on the home front. True to this idea, on the eve of his departure to the United States as ambassador-designate, Ebrahim Rasool said of the fragile GNU here, and the exclusion of Jacob Zuma's MK Party from it: "There [...]
https://youtu.be/yr593l7apNI
"Retrospective clairvoyance" was the arch phrase of Clive James for the miraculous ability of pundits (me included) to deduce this week an event that was "inevitable" last week, though it was not actually seen as likely at the time. Thus, the sweeping win of Donald Trump last Tuesday has birthed endless analyses of why it [...]
On Tuesday, Adriaan Basson, editor in chief of News 24, expressed "renewed gratitude that in South Africa the ‘rights of journalists, authors and artists to write, say and sing what they like’ is an established right in 'our maturing democracy'." Basson is correct, too, that we should "never ever take our open democratic spaces and [...]
Understandably two sections in the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment Act relating, respectively, to mother tongue education and schools' rights to set admission policy have sucked most of the oxygen out of the debate on this controversial legislation. There is a lot at stake here, including removing such decisions from the remit of school bodies [...]
On Saturday evening, I attended a private dinner at the Cape Town residence of one of the new members of the GNU cabinet. There was nothing unusual about the event - the host and guests were old friends, politically close and each had played some role in forming SA’s first genuine coalition cabinet. It is [...]
Last week in London, I had the opportunity to view the extraordinary Vincent van Gogh exhibition "Poets and Lovers" at the National Gallery. The Dutch master's magnificence, from showstoppers such as "Starry Night over the Rhône" and "Sunflowers", were on dazzling display alongside less familiar works - all testament to his creative and troubled genius. [...]
A search of South African government websites for an expression of sympathy on the weekend assassination of six civilian hostages, who were killed by Hamas under the tunnels of Rafah in Gaza, yields a nil return. Cogent explanations for the dearth of empathy - or its partial application - must go beyond the normal claims of [...]
Every day, in the choices we make or don't select, we display a degree of dualism or opposing ideas jostling for our attention and selection. Poetically, Walt Whitman's 1892 epic poem on the human condition, "Song of Myself", summed this up neatly: "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I [...]
For 29 days in June, South Africa was gripped by a political drama. eNCA goes behind closed doors to uncover the make-or-break moments that forged the government of national unity. https://www.enca.com/shows/29-days-june-annika-larsen-special-report
