In a speech delivered in 2008, Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Carole Lewis implicitly questioned the appointment of some black and female judges to the various courts in South Africa since 1994. She argued in a speech that the JSC has become dominated by politicians after the adoption of the final Constitution in 1996 and that [...]
Posts under ‘Race’
What do we talk about when we talk about “transformation”?
Is it at all possible to write sensibly but critically about the way in which the concept of “transformation” has evolved in kleptocratic South Africa? “Transformation” has become a buzzword that is much bandied about and much abused, but few people explain what they mean when they use the word. Like mother hood and apple [...]
Isn’t it all a bit too easy?
Isn’t it all just a bit too easy? Last week the four former Free State University students known as the Reitz Four were found guilty on a charge of crimen injuria by the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court for making a video in which they humiliated 5 workers who were probably old enough to be their mothers. [...]
How to mock a racist
The premise of this satirical piece from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is of course not entirely correct – as anyone who reads the letters pages of South African newspapers (or the comments section of this Blog!) would attest, but the way in which it mocks that arch-racist Dan Roodt is brilliant. By mocking Roodt (seemingly [...]
What have Tweedledum and Tweedledee been up to?
Maybe all this goodwill, peace, love and happiness generated by the World Cup in South Africa have finally turned my brian into a mushy pulp. (Miss World contestants must be horrified by the World Cup: with all this love and peace going around they must have nothing left to do but look pretty and sniff [...]
On one magic moment of the World Cup
It started last week on the day of Bafana Bafana’s second game against Uruguay when I was filling up my car at the petrol station. A white woman – silver haired, well groomed, about 70 years old – was busy having her shiny new Mercedes (some class or the other) filled up as well. She [...]
On corruption and solidarity
There must surely be something wrong with our criminal justice system if, three years after the scandal broke, Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown has still not had his day in court. Why is it taking so long to prosecute this guy who is alleged to have embezzled millions of Rand? Some of the missing money [...]
Is Terreblanche’s church allowed to discriminate?
My friend was incensed: “Why,” he wanted to know, “is the Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk (APK) allowed to discriminate against black people?” Last Friday, at the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche, much was made of the fact that some black journalists and observers were allowed into the APK. This is because the APK is a whites only church [...]
What should come next?
It has been, to say the least, a bizarre and upsetting week in South Africa. What started with the killing of the politically irrelevant old supremacists, Eugene Terreblanche (who might or might not secretly have been attracted to young black men and boys), ended with the tepid “dressing down” of Julius Malema by ANC President Jacob Zuma (who sometimes also [...]
BLA in need of a PR makeover?
Some people who have not come to grips with the notion of substantive equality and think that equality is about the equal treatment of everyone under all circumstances, get very cross about the existence of organisations like the Black Lawyers Association (BLA). “It’s racist!” they shout. “It’s discriminatory!” “How very dare they!”
I am not one [...]
