there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
SURPRISINGLY, there was a well-timed reminder by snail mail: my driver’s licence was due for renewal on 29 April. Surprising because officialdom has publicly said it’s not responsible for reminding us about anything and then […]
Toni Strasburg, Holding the Fort: A Family Torn Apart (Kwela Books, 2019) LIONEL (Rusty) and Hilda Bernstein were among several couples prominent in the South African liberation struggle. When detained on 8 April 1960 during […]
‘DESPITE appalling weather conditions, we were given the go-ahead. We left harbour in failing light and picked up our group of landing craft. They fell into line behind us, twelve ships enormous in bulk compared […]
AT the time of the May 1987 South African general election, when the apartheid government was on its last legs, stickers were distributed reading ‘The trouble … is we don’t know which general we are […]
Adam Habib, Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall (Jonathan Ball, 2019); and Wandile Ngcaweni and Busani Ngcaweni (eds) We Are No Longer at Ease: The Struggle for #FeesMustFall (Jacana, 2018) WORLDWIDE, the shelf life of […]
PRELUDE What we call ‘my life’ is but a constantly rewritten version of our own past. ‘My life’ is the mental autobiography with which and by which we all live. What really happened is quite […]
SAM Bourne is the author of political thrillers. His real-life persona is Jonathan Freedland, one of the Guardian’s acute columnists and a commentator on British current events, especially Brexit, and Jewish affairs. His opinion piece […]
‘IN Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God.’ Those […]
VIEWERS of the SATV soap opera ‘Isidingo’ will recall Horizon Deep mayor Sechaba Matabane-Moloi being set up in a supposedly drug-induced orgy at a Christmas party by his deputy Gabriel Motusi. The devious Motusi missed […]
Peter Storey, I Beg to Differ: Ministry Amid the Teargas (Tafelberg, 2018) THOSE who lived through the State of Emergency of the 1980s will not have forgotten the Candle of Peace, Hope and Justice, a […]