Columnists

On Tuesday, in an interview on Power FM, Johann Rupert the billionaire chairperson of the luxury-goods company  Financière Richemont SA turned out to be exactly as I hoped he would: thoughtless, patronising, and deeply alienated from the…

On Thursday, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that mining companies and the government must obtain full and informed consent from communities before granting a mining licence on their communally-owned land - a massive victory for the…

The Constitutional Review Committee adopted a recommendation to parliament that section 25 of the Constitution needs to be amended “to make explicit what is implicit”. The indication is that the amendment will not be a drastic amendment,…

We need to update our copyright laws to allow poor students fair use rights of textbooks, which remain prohibitively expensive for most, writes THABISO BHENGU. The South African economy is in shambles and the majority of the population…

Not so long-ago political analysts and mainstream commentators were already writing the eulogy of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) because of the election of the ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa and the removal of the former president Zuma.…

A couple of weeks ago Sibusiso Ngwenya (Skinny Sbu) shared on his social media platform that he had been struggling with depression and that the business which he founded over five years ago, Skinny Sbu Socks, needed a cash injection. He…

Noted antiracism practitioner Dr Robin Di Angelo, who coined the term white fragility, talks about how in her workshops she asks people of colour “how often to do we give white people real, honest feedback about the ways in which they are…

What do the human rights of minorities in Iran, in the Middle East, have to do with Africans, writes MAZIAR BAHARI. I started to answer this question when I made my film The Cost of Discrimination in 2017. The film follows the life of an…

On Monday the trial of Nigerian Pastor Timothy Omotoso began in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth. First witness, 22-year-old Cheryl Zondi, was cross-examined and made to relive her traumatic experience by her alleged abuser's…

Since 2012, 11 October has been marked by the United Nations as the International Day of the Girl Child. The day aims to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting girls' empowerment and the fulfillment of…

On the 17th of  September 2018, the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, called on law enforcement agencies to help quell the recent spate of violence which has rocked schools in South Africa. This after the South African national…

The attention and political discourse that is emerging as a result of the recent racist outbursts like that of Adam Catzavelos, Vicki Momberg, Penny Sparrow etc are cheapening the conversation about racism, writes THABISO BHENGU.…

The bunny chow: a dish ingrained in the fabric of South African culture. So much so that its successor, the kota, has been credited as one of the leading causes of obesity in school children, writes ANGELO C LOUW. It owes its origins to…

The elections at the University of Pretoria have come and left in the year 2018.I must say the burden that they carried sometimes lead to sleepless nights filled with anxiety and contemplating the number of people that would actually…

Why is apartheid denialism in South Africa not a crime? More to the point, why is apartheid denialism not even mentioned in the bill coming up in parliament on Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech, writes AYESHA FAKIE. …

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was signed in June 2016 and has been provisionally implemented since October 2016. Various stakeholders are making efforts to ensure that the agreement…

The current University of Cape Town Employment Equity Plan projects that by 2020 the African professor category will increase from 2% to 7% while only 16% of professionally qualified middle management will be African. White professors will…

It is the end of Women’s Month in South Africa, and for me it still feels like being a woman in South Africa is moving from LOVE to DEATH, writes TSAMME MMAMMONE WA KA MFUNDISI. It’s been 13 years since I experienced a brutal killing in…

Hey, Trevor. Thanks for thinking of Pakistan. When your book Born a Crime was published, we listened to the audiobook as a family. We fell in love with your voice and trenchant critique of the racist structures and culture that ravage…

As genocide and concentration camps have entered our lives through what is happening to the Rohingya people and the internment of immigrant children in Trump’s America, I have reflected even more on humanity’s tenuous relationship with…