SA: the patient that wants to be cured
I’d like to start my talk today by quoting from a tweet, lightly edited. See if this sounds familiar …
Fixing a burst pipe is not the same as owning the pipe
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’s proposed plan that private companies should help buy electricity and fix water systems elicited the usual predictable backlash on social media.
If you still oppose privatisation, you don’t really understand South Africa
The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s recent local government manifesto has predictably provoked a backlash.
SA needs a capitalist revolution
About the lack of growth in our economy (raised by Jonathan Katzenellenbogen’s piece yesterday, Do we truly want to grow?), this is a political problem that can only have a political solution.
Do we truly want to grow?
Last week, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Lesetja Kganyago, asked those holding power in the country, the vested interests in government, and those close to them, if they truly wanted the country to grow.
Two in three young South Africans can’t find work
The rate of joblessness among South Africans aged between 15 and 24 reached 62.8% in the second quarter of 2026, a percentage-point rise of 1.9 on the quarter and 0.6 on the year.
The keffiyeh conundrum
The keffiyeh is worn by many Western academics and feminists as a symbol of liberation. But its history and the societies from which it comes tell a very different story.
Funding journalism: the tender mercies of the state
Styli Charalambous says only the state can fix journalism’s “market failure”, but the state’s two journalism funding efforts produced a propaganda organ and a Gupta laundromat.
PW and the assassin
The apartheid state’s assassination of ANC chief representatives abroad has been raised in recent testimony before the Khampepe Commission of inquiry into the sabotaging of prosecutions that should have followed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after 2003.
Ukraine: a theory of victory
As Ukraine has moved through its different phases of war, the theory of victory has changed.