there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Sheffield BORIS Johnson has written us all a letter which will appear on our doormats sometime this week. The Observer front page tells us ‘tougher lockdown may be necessary’, and the letter will reinforce last […]
Moe Shaik, The ANC Spy Bible: Surviving across Enemy Lines (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2020) A MEMOIR might be loosely regarded as autobiography with benefits; or, in more literary terms, poetic licence. Any biographical account described […]
A WORLD turned upside down: that was one newspaper’s headline take on the Covid-19 pandemic and for once the media cannot be accused of overdoing the hype. Pictures of European cities tell an eerie tale […]
Shirley Gunn and Shanil Haricharan, Voices from the Underground: Eighteen Life Stories from Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Ashley Kriel Detachment (Cape Town: Penguin, 2019) The MK unit known as the Ashley Kriel Detachment (AKD) had a […]
Jan-Jan Joubert, Will South Africa be Okay?: 17 Key Questions (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2019) THIS book has a novel approach to South Africa’s current condition: responses to the most frequently asked questions posed to political […]
George Soros, In Defence of Open Society (John Murray, 2019) A LIST of George Soros’s low-life detractors – from big fish like Vladimir Putin to small fry like Julius Malema flourishing in a groundswell of […]
IT is rumoured that Stephen Whitehead, one of the security branch (SB) policemen responsible for the death in detention of anti-apartheid activist and trade unionist Neil Aggett on 5 February 1982, had a deal with […]
FRIDAY, January 31, 2020 will be recorded in British history as a day of infamy, sadness and shame. Brexit represents the triumph of English populist nationalism with its toxic baggage of xenophobia, philistinism, ignorance, nostalgia, […]
Adriaan Basson, Blessed by Bosasa: Inside Gavin Watson’s State Capture Cult (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball) THE GRAND corruption of Gavin Watson’s facilities management company, Bosasa, detailed at length in Adriaan Basson’s book will be familiar to […]
HERSCHELLE Gibbs and Kevin Pietersen shrug off Joss Buttler’s expletive-laden rant at Vernon Philander in the recent Cape Town test as typical of what ‘happens on the field most of the time’ (Witness, January 9). […]