there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
LOCKDOWN 2.0 (to adopt the favoured 21st century label) contrasts hugely with Lockdown 1.0, not only with respect to school closures, air quality and the weather, but also in relation to the ‘rules’. ‘Few seem […]
R.W. Johnson, Foreign Native: An African Journey (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2020) LIBERAL social democrat is Bill Johnson’s self-description; and in this world of rampant and rabid populist nationalism his thinking should be highly prized. He […]
Richard Steyn, Seven Votes: How WWII Changed South Africa Forever (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2020) SOUTH Africa’s decision to go to war against Germany on 6 September 1939 was made a year after the government had […]
Riaan de Villiers and Jan-Ad Stemmet, Prisoner 913: The Release of Nelson Mandela (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2020) EVEN trees in the garden of Nelson Mandela’s cottage at Victor Verster Prison were bugged. Only one inside […]
AS children we learnt the importance of honesty and fairness, and were quick with ‘it’s not fair’ whenever we suspected unequal treatment. No doubt we didn’t always tell the truth, but I remember my internal […]
Jonathan Lichtenstein, The Berlin Shadow: Living with the Ghosts of the Kindertransport (London: Scribner, 2020) HANS Eugen Lichtenstein, aged 12, arrived alone from Berlin at London’s Liverpool Street station in mid-1939, one of ten thousand […]
‘IF you’re not confused, you haven’t been paying attention’ (Tom Peters, rough paraphrase There are, quite suddenly, increasing numbers of new cases of coronavirus in the UK, the R number is now 1–1.2, and a […]
Michael Schmidt, Death Flight: Apartheid’s Secret Doctrine of Disappearance (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2020) PARKED at an East Rand airport you may find a Piper Seneca II, registered ZS-KFG. This is the aircraft used in the […]
Greg Ardé, War Party: How the ANC’s Political Killings are Breaking South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2020) ORGANISED crime resorts readily to violence; so it is no surprise that the ANC, which Durban-based journalist Greg […]
SOUTH Africa’s political pundits are forecasting major problems ahead for the African National Congress. Having run the country’s state institutions and its economy into the ground, it is currently mismanaging the Covid-19 epidemic. A string […]