Into Parts Unknown III

Beginning in mid-1975, my life evolved into a blur of professional activity.  Implausibly, but in line with what I had hoped for, I was a foreign correspondent. For the Financial Mail I was writing stories about migrant labour on the

There is in fact a better alternative to BEE, Mr Grootes

This piece was written in response to Stephen Grootes’s piece in the Daily Maverick, "BEE on borrowed time — why attacks on SA’s social engineering project won’t abate this time", on 10 March. It was offered to, but declined by, the

When the nightingale sings – Argentina under Milei: Part 1

South Africans are, on average, poorer than they were a decade ago. Since 2013, the average wealth of South Africans has gone down in real (US$) terms 7.4%. Yet the world is, viewed as a whole, a much richer place,

Scrap BEE

Don’t be so quick to dismiss Elon Musk’s concerns about introducing Starlink to South Africa due to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). While Musk is being disingenuous stating that Starlink can’t operate in South Africa because he’s “not black”, there is

Migration and education: quo vadis?

South Africa is one of the largest refugee receiver states of asylum seekers and refugees on the continent. In terms of section 3 of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998 (as Amended), a refugee is, among others, someone who has

Human Rights Day

On pain, desperation and chiropractors

Alternative health peddlers get rich exploiting desperate sufferers of intractable ailments or pain, often with disastrous consequences. There are few things more likely to motivate one to grasp at straws than desperation about an intractable health condition. One of the

In Memoriam: Roger David Crawford (10 September 1944 − 19 March 2025)

Roger Crawford, who has died after a short illness, is remembered as a committed and influential liberal who straddled modern South Africa’s historic watershed, engaging the mounting challenges of the late-apartheid years and the no less testing environment of the