Child grants should be scrapped
In April 2023, I penned an article published right here on The Daily Friend titled “It’s High Time Taxpayers Protested About the Child Grant Programme.” My argument then was that the programme should be capped to limit its growing burden on taxpayers. While I was critical of the system, I stopped short of advocating its abolition.
Iran: a bloody mess of a deal
After three and a half months, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives, Trump has “negotiated” his way back to where Barack Obama left things in 2016.
Standing in the fire – Soweto 1976 and the cases that shaped me and others
On this Youth Day, 16 June, as South Africa once again marks the courage of the young people who rose up in Soweto in 1976, it is worth remembering something easily lost in our present climate of division: that the fight against apartheid was never a struggle of one race against another, but of ordinary South Africans—black and white—who chose justice over comfort, humanity over fear, and principle over personal safety.
Beyond the Gini coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures inequality, but it cannot tell us whether a society is free, fair, or open. To answer those questions, we first need to decide what we mean by equality.
From urgency to delay: what happened to South Africa’s ICJ case?
Nearly two months after Hamas launched its deadly surprise attack on the State of Israel, the ANC-led government brought a case against Israel before the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. South Africa alleged that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were committing acts of genocide in Gaza.
South Africa cannot defend a constitutional mandate with an unfunded military
South Africa has reached a point where the public conversation about defence must become honest and more transparent.
Liberalism: in search of an idea – Part 3
The 20th century saw the emergence of what has been termed New Liberalism. This was essentially a shift from focusing on removing the constraints on people to proactively assisting them. It sought to ameliorate social problems and to provide society’s less affluent with the means for their upliftment and effective participation in society.
Fixing our politics requires a robust economy
The rise of Asia raised the bar for all economies and AI will have similar effects.
Racial classification is just a human invention … but could it be useful?
A lot of social science – beginning with the Victorians – uses the concept of race to analyse humanity. Much of that analysis is uncomplimentary toward non-white groups. It appears self-serving toward the British Empire and is frankly just racist.
Lenacapavir: SA’s biggest breakthrough in years in fight against HIV infection
President Cyril Ramaposa launched the roll-out of a new HIV preventative medicine at the Lillian Ngoyi stadium in Mpumalanga earlier this month that stands to set the country on track to reducing new HIV infections to less than 0.1% by 2032 and getting the HIV pandemic under control around a decade earlier than expected.