I can no longer stand by as a white South African while other white South Africans – knowingly or unknowingly – parade their racial supremacy over black South Africans, unable or unwilling to detox their thoughts and actions from the harsh dogma the apartheid government stuffed down our throats. Think of this as a wake-up […]

Today I went from Twitter jail (a holding cell they isolate you in when Twitter deems you’ve tweeted too much) to trending on CT Twitter. And all because of my passion for The Big Issue. I’ve written before about the challenges the organisation faces. You can read it here: http://www.inotherwordscg.co.za/opinion/2015/my-big-issue-support-the-big-issue/. And, once again, this month we find ourselves […]

‘Remembering Hendrik Verwoerd as a ‘smart’ leader is like remembering Hitler as a good organiser’

Praising Hitler’s organisational skills — used to plot the systematic extermination of all non-Aryans — is akin to admiring the strength of a rapist’s erection

It’s time to set the record straight. It’s clear from real life and Twitter interactions I’ve had recently that some people don’t appreciate the role The Big Issue plays, most significantly in the Western Cape. A role that would not be necessary, I hasten to add, if government were able to fulfil its obligations to […]

School pupils were left unattended and a predator struck on the first day of th 16 Days of Activism campaign

On this day last year, I wrote a column for The Cape Times called ‘The tragic irony: 16 days of brutal violence against children’ about a young girl raped by her own father in her own house. The girl, whom I’ll call L, is the niece of my domestic worker, B.

I didn’t intentionally ignore the dehumanisation of my fellow South Africans. But that doesn’t excuse my selfishness

Today’s Mail and Guardian carries the following (what appears to be a) plea to Pick n Pay to stand against cruelty to pigs. It is supposedly an advertisement, because the newspaper apparently knows nothing about it. Chris Roper, the editor, placed an apology on their website. In it he states:  “Owing to a lethal confluence of ill luck […]

Sunday evening. I’m sitting happily with a cup of tea and two glossy magazines. But these aren’t my usual mags. These are free glossies distributed with two newspapers we subscribe to: Wanted (published monthly by Business Day, distributed free to subscribers) and Business Class (distributed free with the Sunday Times once a month). Wanted: a […]

My wise (much) younger sister recently sent me a link to a YouTube video that’s got me thinking. I’m often very late to these things – bear with, Miranda – so you may all have forgotten it already. It’s billed as a ‘spoken word film’ by London-based writer and director, Gary Turk. The five-minute film, […]