Praying for water
Michael Morris and Nicholas Lorimer discuss the serious effects of the water crisis on South Africans. They also discuss Ferrochrome smelters and Eskom’s plan to
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The difference between ad hominem, insult, and taking things personally
(Warning: this article contains swear words and penises.) “Dear fucking lunatic,” reads the salutation of a famous open letter to Donald Trump. It goes on: “At your recent press conference – more a word salad that had a stroke and
The tragedy of following leaders
Sixty million people were butchered, burnt, blown apart, starved or otherwise reduced to dust in the two great conflagrations of the 20th Century.
Is South Africa quietly ushering in a Basic Income Grant?
There is a peculiar art to incremental governance: the ability to arrive, by degrees, at a destination one was never quite willing to announce. South Africa may be in the middle of just such a journey.
News Focus: to the moon, and beyond
The four Artemis II mission astronauts, first lunar travellers since Apollo 17 in 1972, are speeding across space to complete their historic lunar fly-around to push deeper into space than any astronauts before them. Their spacecraft, Orion, will travel about
Why Zille’s Johannesburg stunts are more serious than they look
An election campaign is often described in the grand language of strategy, messaging, and ground operations. But in reality, this vocabulary, for all its value as a tool of practice and analysis, can actually be boiled down to two simpler
Pigeonholing wrecks intelligent public debate
Labels are sometimes useful, but pigeonholing and binary thinking also undermine the conversations on which democratic debate depends.
When family ties do tie too tight
It’s Sunday, shortly after midday, and the meat is on the braai. Noah’s cousin, Biff, has invited us to share it, together with all the usual trappings. We know them on no better than a wedding‑and‑funeral basis, so the invitation
How to restore Roedean
The recent controversy at Roedean School in Johannesburg, which arose following the boycotting of a tennis fixture with King David, Linksfield, generated intense public debate concerning anti-Semitism and the politicisation of schools.