Creator
Armand Bam
Dr Armand Bam is the head of social impact and senior lecturer in business in society at the University of Stellenbosch Business School
Fix the damn potholes: The poverty of our politics
As local government elections approach, South Africans remain caught between service delivery failures and endless political excuses. It is time to demand real accountability.
Women should not have to perform wellness to be valued
South Africa celebrates women's strength, but for those with chronic illnesses like lupus, resilience can be a dangerous compliment. This article explores the hidden costs women…
Why the media should stop calling white South Africans ‘refugees’
Mzansi is many things: unequal, violent, frustrated, politically volatile and economically strained. But it is not a war zone. Dissatisfaction with governance, fears about crime,…
Freedom, memory and the curious outrage of comfortable men
As we commemorate freedom, a familiar chorus returns: that South Africa has too many ‘race laws’, that redress has gone too far, that equality now demands forgetting
The weight women carry and the stories we refuse to see
International Women’s Day should not merely be a day of applause. It should be a day of reckoning. A day on which we examine the invisible labour that sustains our institutions.
Ordinary courage propels us from silence to justice
The brutal assassination of Babita Deokaran was not an isolated crime. It was a symptom. A loud alarm in a system where corruption is not criminal aberration but an ecosystem
Errol Musk and apartheid amnesia
The truly astonishing part of Musk’s interview was his insistence that apartheid did not oppress Black people because he personally did not witness any oppression
The heavy price of silence
Keeping quiet, denial and lack of courage in leaders enable genocide and corruption
Boks’ win raises questions of allegiance, privilege and the test of leadership
The rugby team’s victory over the All Black was way more than a record win; it was a symbolic one too
Charity must be strategic. Enough of the bleeding hearts
Generosity without focus is sentiment. Strategic charity, urgent and directed, is transformation
Cutting mobility: Cape Town’s Dial-a-Ride ‘realignment’ false economy
Employment isn’t possible without movement, education requires reliable, safe transport and autonomy, dignity and safety are non-negotiables
Red beret, red cap: The wearers are populists that offer theatre, not solutions
Julius Malema and Donald Trump are alarmingly similar – charismatic ‘leaders’ with questionable character whose interventions appeal to emotions but won’t fix the economy
After the hashtags: A letter to the youth left with debris
South Africans’ history taught us the cost of inhumanity and that it was defeated by resistance, so we must not be indifferent to those building inequality in the world
Elon Musk and the irony of calling black economic empowerment racist
Beneficiaries crying oppression are eating at the table apartheid set for them — and complaining when someone else is finally offered a chair
The 49 that left and the 64,749,951 who stay
We debated the reasons the Afrikaners left their culture, friends and family – fear, uncertainty, disillusionment. But life in South Africa continued as usual