The dishonesty of the NHI defenders
The South African Communist Party (SACP) says that using the Constitutional Court to challenge the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act is “the ultimate definition of a political oxymoron.”
Full story of African enslavement excluded from draft history curriculum
A Ministerial History Task Team appointed by Angie Motshekga – a former African National Congress (ANC) minister of basic education – has prepared a draft history curriculum with a clear anti-Western and anti-capitalist emphasis. That ideological bias is evident in many aspects of the proposed curriculum. However, it is particularly pronounced in how the draft deals with the history of slavery in Africa.
MK’s pro-Tobacco Bill turn: The lady doth protest too much
As a non-smoker, I have written about South Africa’s Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill more times than I care to count– and will continue to write about it.
The full outrage over immigration has yet to come
Every few years, anti-foreign-migrant sentiment explodes into widespread violence in South Africa.
The high price of safety
The controversy over safety ratings for low-end vehicles in South Africa is a symptom of a conflicted government.
Is the new draft history curriculum for schools in SA even legal?
The South African Constitution is very clear in its treatment of the rights of children. [A “child” means a person under the age of 18 years.] This age group covers most school-going citizens.
The problem with visible good
‘A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.’ This statement is commonly attributed to Joseph Stalin, though there is no reliable evidence that he ever said it.
Property rights in Africa’s cities: the new frontier of the urban transition
For Africa, the twenty first century promises a squarely urban future. At the turn of the new Millenium, according to the Africapolis database, just under a third of continent’s population lived in towns and cities; by 2025, this had risen to 57%; and by 2040, it is projected to reach 62%. Africa is adding tens of thousands of residents to its cities daily, each of them aspiring for the step-change in life chances that urbanisation has produced elsewhere – in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and in Asia in the twentieth.
Institutionalising idealism is dangerous
Post-1994 South Africa has shown how mixing idealism and institutionalism can encourage exploitation.
What do the moon landing, Riaan Cruywagen, and obesity have in common? Freedom!
A lot has changed between the first moon landing on 1969 and the historic 2026 Artemis mission around the moon. Human beings have now travelled further from the earth than ever before. We shared photos of the historic event with each other, not arguing this time whether they were real or not, but marveling at how AI could nowadays produce deepfake images that you could no longer tell from reality.