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/ 25 November 2005

December 08 – December 15

A mindless destroyer I used to jokingly refer to the United States as the “Evil Empire”, but I’m afraid history will show this to be an accurate description of a society that mindlessly destroyed Earth’s precious reserves. About 25% of Earth’s population uses 75% of its resources, and causes a similar proportion of Earth’s pollution. […]

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/ 25 November 2005

March 31 – April 6

Revealed: Bleek Hoax It appears that the hallowed Bleek records, housed at the University of Cape Town (UCT), could be an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the German linguist, Wilhelm Bleek, aided and abetted by his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, and his daughter, Dorothea. This bombshell was dropped at a conference on marginalised languages by Bleek’s great-grandson, […]

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/ 25 November 2005

January 26 to February 1 2007

Is this animal welfare? I refer to the Mail & Guardian‘s article (January 18) about the tragic story of Frida the Romanian lioness, so cunningly misused by Vier Pfoten International (VPI). Last year, our department of trade and industry asked me to comment on VPI’s application to establish a sanctuary in the Free State for […]

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/ 25 November 2005

July 14 – July 20 2006

Campus racism insidious Auditors Deloitte have found that there is no racism at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s medical school (July 7), only “small incidents, which appear to be nothing more substantial than personal differences, or wrong perceptions, or misunderstandings …” Case closed, let’s get on with it! The problem here is one of perspective, because […]

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/ 25 November 2005

January 20 – 26 2006

Money still lily-white The article “The new colour of money” (December 23) misleads the South African public by painting a glossy picture of black people and a bleak picture of whites. It wants us to believe that black people have finally arrived and that the future of white people in this country is as good […]

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/ 25 November 2005

July 07 – July 13 2006

‘Literary gent’ hits back Drew Forrest painfully exposes his colonial cultural cringe when he calls me an “Oxford-trained literary gent” (June 30). Then he shadow-boxes with his own “stripped” and “boiled down” rewrite of what I wrote, rather than arguing with what I actually wrote. Forrest’s “Mbeki” has “embraced privatisation”, but the real Mbeki has […]

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/ 25 November 2005

September 29 to October 05 2006

All faiths used violence Pope Benedict, in trying to argue that religion should not be spread by force, failed to say that the Catholic Church, indeed Christianity, has been guilty of this. Strife between Catholicism and Protestantism, and the use of force to maintain orthodoxies by the rack, burning and warfare, are an unedifying history. […]

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/ 25 November 2005

March 10 – March 16

DA is getting stronger In her analysis of the 2006 local election results (March 3), Vicki Robinson reached the premature conclusion that support for the Democratic Alliance had dropped and that the DA had once again failed to make inroads in the townships. A proper post-election analysis shows that the opposite is true: in 2006, […]

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/ 25 November 2005

August 04 – August 10 2006

In Cyril we trust If Cyril Ramaphosa makes himself available for the presidency, it could be the best thing ever to happen to the African National Congress and the country. Unlike Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, he has tasted the mood of both business and labour by being a union and business leader. As he […]

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/ 25 November 2005

February 16 to February 22 2007

Heed your subjects’ cries! Paul Harris, you are my banker. Invest wisely: R20-million would help hire and train more than 20 000 more policemen and women. You cannot stay on the sidelines and expect the government to provide all the time. Be ingenious. Come up with plans in tandem with government. Do not seek personal […]