Drew Forrest
Drew Forrest is a former deputy editor of the M&G
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/ 7 April 2004

‘We are not power-mongers’

”The government wants to concentrate on what it does best and leave the rest to the experts — while ensuring the experts don’t work against the interests of the people we’re trying to help.” In the last of the series, Drew Forrest puts 10 Really Diabolical Posers (RDPs) to ANC deputy secretary general Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele

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/ 29 March 2004

‘We must expose our mistakes’

”Patricia [de Lille] is a waffler, and not an organisational person. She’s a creation of the media, because she’s done a good job for white liberals. They’ve made her famous because of her attacks on the ANC. She’s done nothing for people on the ground.” Notorious settler Drew Forrest fires 10 bullets at Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Themba Godi.

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/ 15 March 2004

‘We’re still far from a volkstaat’

”Affirmative action is creating a new discrimination, an angry new generation of young whites. Research indicates that if the employment equity quotas were enforced with 1,9% economic growth, 600 000 whites would have to be fired.” Drew Forrest hands out this week’s tien van die beste to Freedom
Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder.

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/ 23 February 2004

‘We’re born team players’

”Whites who really accept the new South Africa are with the NNP. An ironic development after 1994 is that the NNP has become the real rainbow party, while the party of liberalism has taken over the role of conservative complainers.” New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk fields 10 pre-election curve-balls.

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/ 16 February 2004

‘We’re still players’

”Our 400-odd large companies can’t absorb the millions of black South Africans outside the economic mainstream. You can say we now have black billionaires like Tokyo Sexwale, but they’re not creating jobs.” United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa fields this week’s 10 tough ones from Drew Forrest.

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/ 30 January 2004

‘I’m not a guilty white’

”Black youth is suffering tremendously because of the ANC government’s so-called policy of black economic empowerment, which — like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither an empire, holy nor Roman — does not empower blacks.” In the first of a series of encounters with party leaders, Drew Forrest puts 10 tricky questions to Tony Leon.

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/ 20 December 2003

Existing unto death

‘I’ve been to other side, mate, and there’s fuckin’ nothin’ there.” The crafted words are those of Australian media mogul Kerry Packer, revived after being dead for six minutes following a massive heart attack. Another year ends, and an oldish man’s thoughts turn to his mortality. Drew Forrest casts a layperson’s eye over the idea of the afterlife.

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/ 9 December 2003

‘Let’s not undermine our gains’

”I still believe in looking for the voices, perspectives and experiences of black people.” Drew Forrest speaks to Unisa vice-chancellor Barney Pityana, who gives vent to his worries about tertiary mergers, the media, black intellectuals and the state of South Africa’s democracy.

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/ 14 November 2003

Losing the plot

Deputy President Jacob Zuma has a serious difficulty in relation to the bribery investigation that still hangs over him. If the allegations are, as he says, ”defamatory” and ”utterly baseless”, why does National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka take them so seriously?

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/ 15 October 2003

From thriller to the griller

The amiable, soft-spoken, self-deprecatingly jocular giant with no hair and a plastic cooking spatula in one hand — could he be the meanest, baddest, most silently menacing world heavyweight champion who ever threw leather? Former king of the boxing ring George Foreman now boasts the title ‘King of the Grill’.