Forget the outside world, this is a disaster of the country’s own making

Opinions

Like a dreadful inevitability – because that is what it is – load-shedding is back. Once more the economy stutters as opportunities are lost, and

The nature of plastic pollution

Opinions

Environmental movements spend millions of dollars on campaigns to convince you and me that we are the problem. But ‘we’ aren’t. At least, we’re not

Barbarossa becomes king

Opinions

This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past. March 4th 1152 – Frederick I Barbarossa is elected King of Germany

Smuggling in a permanent income support grant via the back door

Opinions

Lindiwe Zulu, minister of social development, is seeking to smuggle in a permanent ‘social relief of distress’ grant by means of regulations on which she

Government is swimming upstream trying to get migrants to return

Opinions

Emigration is a perennial topic among middle-class South Africans, and in the last few years it seems more people (of all races) have been considering

Ukraine: SA has made a costly choice

Opinions

South Africa could pay heavily for abstaining in the United Nations (UN) vote to condemn Russia and call for the withdrawal of its troops. It

Inside Putin’s Russia: ‘We fear the worst’

Opinions

The authorities have closed a number of independent media outlets in Russia in recent days, particularly those critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Notably,

An ode to plastic

Opinions

Plastic is, nowadays, almost universally reviled. Yet it shouldn’t be. It is a magnificent material, with innumerable advantages that far outweigh its few disadvantages. Plastic,

Not a nice war

Opinions

I was in the middle of trying to unsubscribe to a wellness – or as they say in old parlance, a health and beauty –

Russia and the West: miscalculations all round

Opinions

Numerous commentators have branded Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “miscalculation”. But Western leaders have themselves made major miscalculations, nobody more so than the former