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From The Thornveld

there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,

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  • About the writer
  • Sharp Thoughts
  • Book Reviews
  • Memoirs
  • Miscellaneous
  • Reflections on the Rainbow Nation
  • Sharp Sharp
  • Contact Me
  • Privacy Policy

Month: May 2020

  • A tale of four countries in a time of lockdown: part eight

    Sheffield IN 1908, just short of 15, my maternal grandmother Elizabeth Smith began her apprenticeship to become a dressmaker. In due course she passed her skills to her daughters (once by throwing a half-made dress […]

    May 25, 2020Miscellaneous

     
  • A tale of four countries in a time of lockdown: part seven

    Sheffield THE silence, solitude and slower pace of life that accompany some people’s lockdowns are potentially nurturing. Those of us who choose to live alone anyway do it because it suits us. Also, according to […]

    May 18, 2020Miscellaneous

     
  • Futility of boots and guns in a pandemic

    THERE’S an old saying, of unknown origin but popularised by Mark Twain: ‘There are lies, damn lies … and statistics’. Each day in this world of pandemic we are bombarded by figures and graphs. They […]

    May 12, 2020Sharp Sharp

     
  • A tale of four countries in a time of lockdown: part six

    Sheffield Maybe if we were to take down all the road signs, the virus would find it harder to get about? (John Crace’s Twitter response to the government’s change of approach, 10 May 2020) ‘STAY […]

    May 11, 2020Miscellaneous

     
  • Militaristic response to crisis

    SOUTH Africans woke up on Friday March 27 to the grim realisation that they are again living in a police state. A nondescript government whose norm is irrationality has chosen a threatening, militaristic response rather […]

    May 4, 2020Sharp Sharp

     
  • Blame lies with an authoritarian China

    FAMINES, according to the renowned economist Amartya Sen, do not happen in functioning democracies.  Nor do epidemics. There has been no better illustration of this than the Covid-19 pandemic that could become a turning point […]

    May 4, 2020Sharp Sharp

     
  • A tale of four countries in a time of lockdown: part five

    Sheffield WHILE humans altered everything on the face of the world, these birds kept believing in a map that never changed (from Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, 2018) One of the restorative parts of my daily […]

    May 4, 2020Miscellaneous

     

Recent Posts

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  • The Whistleblowers

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