Drew Forrest
Drew Forrest is a former deputy editor of the M&G
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/ 1 June 2008

Daring to be a Daniel

POINT: In April 2001, 22 months after Thabo Mbeki became president, the Mail & Guardian ran a full-length front-cover photograph of him alongside the question: ”Is this man fit to rule?” Letters to the paper the following week convey the intensity of the reaction. ”Who are these racists masquerading as newspapermen?”

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/ 11 April 2008

Congress chaos shocks leaders

Three heavyweight former leaders of the ANC Youth League have expressed dismay over the league’s chaotic five-day conference, complaining that it reflected sharply deteriorating ”cadreship” throughout the ANC. The conference adjourned without passing a single substantive resolution on issues relating to South Africa’s youth.

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/ 22 March 2008

What is ‘the good’?

"What is ‘good’? ‘Good’ for whom? Is there a common good – the same for all people, all tribes, all conditions of life? Or is my good your evil? … Is good eternal and constant? Or is yesterday’s good today’s vice, yesterday’s evil today’s good?" Drawing on Vasily Grossman’s <i>Life and Fate</i>, Drew Forrest argues that organised faiths inevitably oppress and divide.

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/ 29 February 2008

Investors in for long haul

"Regrettably he was buried in Durban," Masterbond campaigner Don Mackenzie reportedly said of one of the collapsed company’s curators. "Otherwise I’d go and piss on his grave." The Masterbond curatorship dragged on for more than a decade amid bitter claims that investors were milked. Its ghost hangs over the biggest South African corporate scandal

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/ 10 January 2008

Who’s who in the Zu(ma) NWC

Jacob Zuma’s blitzkrieg for control of the ANC was triumphantly concluded this week with the election of the new national working committee (NWC), the party’s 28-member inner leadership core. The NWC, charged with the day-to-day running of the ANC, will spearhead the next stage in Zuma’s campaign — the attritional warfare for control of government that will likely be more reminiscent of Stalingrad.