If you are not a graduate of the University of Stellenbosch, you can skip this post. For some reason I have been nominated as a candidate for election to the University of Stellenbosch Council by the alumni of that university. As I would be embarrassed if I get the lowest number of votes, I am [...]
Posts under ‘democracy’
Twenty children and counting
The ANC wants us to believe news that President Jacob Zuma has fathered yet another child out of wedlock (and hence that he has had sex with yet another woman who is not one if his wives without using a condom) is a private matter. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya is quoted as saying that Zuma’s right to [...]
More questions on the AbaThembu King
Very few people – least of all anyone in government – seem to be taking seriously the claim by Votani Majola, lawyer for King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, that the AbaThembu tribe had seceded from South Africa. This is curious, given the fact that Dalindyebo was confirmed as the only King of the AbaThembu in 2008 by a [...]
Our own Sarah Palin?
During the USA Presidential campaign, vice presidential candidate Sarah “Barracuda” Palin was rightly lambasted after giving a disastrous and laughable interview to Katie Couric. The most quoted section dealt with her lack of foreign policy experience and went like this:
Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you [...]
Why all the fear, paranoia and distrust?
Why do South Africans generally seem so distrustful, fearful, and paranoid of one another? When ANC leaders or supporters do something Helen Zille does not like, she is quick to claim that it is all part of an ANC plot. When someone criticises the appointment of the CEO of the SABC, the MK War veterans claim the CEO is [...]
Can the abaThembu secede from South Africa?
Can those sad folks living in the Afrikaner quasi-homeland of Orania (where they even have a monument to the Koeksister!) secede from South Africa if they decide they do not like to be governed by the ANC government anymore and would rather do Volkspele and play Jukskei (a game so tedious that it makes bowls [...]
On reasonable accommodation
Few recent events have highlighted the racial fault lines in South African society more starkly than the recent death of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. While many South Africans (mostly white) have welcomed the death of the late Minister, pointing to her disastrous management of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the untold suffering and death caused by it, many [...]
Ruling elite not interested in democracy or the Rule of Law?
When EP Thompson, the Marxist historian considered by many to be the greatest British historian of his time, wrote that the Rule of Law was “an unqualified human good”, he created quite a stir. It was an article of faith among Marxists that the law was always used by the ruling class to legitimise its [...]
In a democracy, suckers will be sucked
When someone (like myself!) criticises the President of the day (for making homophobic statements, say, or for appointing a dishonest lackey as head of the prosecuting authority), it is often said that such criticism is wrong because it does not show respect for the incumbent head of state as an individual and also insults the Office that [...]
Privacy? Security? Oh ple-e-ease!
Sometimes a politician says something so daft and indefensible that one cannot but wonder whether he or she thinks ordinary voters are complete and utter fools. Maybe this does not surprise many people because they have come to expect that politicians will lie to them. But being an eternal optimist – one of the few [...]
