NB: This is a response to Sifiso Mtsweni's unpublished draft paper. That you have not seen it is not my problem. He emailed it to me after I asked for it on Facebook. He will probably send it to you too if you ask for it. -- Dear Sifiso Johnny-Tso Mtsweni, You don't have a DC, you won't do anything to me for responding here. I am done reading your piece. It comes close to what I've thought about writing but you missed the point by a few points. 1) Your article is too embedded on its case . . . Continue reading this article

NB: This article is reproduced here with the kind written permission from Anna March. It first appeared at salon.com on 23 March 2013. We requested permission to republish it here because it may be relevant to the ongoing national public discourse on women empowerment in general and women abuse in particular. Thirty-some summers ago, when I was 15, I lost my virginity to a boy who didn’t care a bit about my emotional well-being. He was very popular, on his way to college in the fall, and sleeping . . . Continue reading this article

On Monday, 18 March 2013, the ANC Secretary General, Cde Gwede Mantashe announced the ANC NEC decision to dissolve the NEC of the ANCYL. The merits and demerits of the ANC NEC decision are moot at this point. However, there is an imminent appointment of the ANCYL National Task Team (NTT) to assume (some) duties of the ANCYL NEC. The work of the NTT will be somewhat burdensome. Part of the ANC NEC decision was to halt any plans that were already underway for the regional congresses and provincial . . . Continue reading this article

Relationships are very complex and a guide about them can rarely be one size fits all. As it is common knowledge I am not an expert on the subject but I thought I would write about this neutral topic after 2% of the 56 readers of this blog complained that I have not written in a long time. It is common in discussions about relationships to ask whether a partner should have unrestricted access to their partner's mobile phone and by extension their Facebook account, emails and so on. Besides discussions . . . Continue reading this article

Thank you programme director. Good evening ladies and gentleman, I notice that out of the 4605 facebook friends I have been inviting all week, only 6 managed to come. I guess very few people take me serious or rather most of those facebook friends don't like books. For those who managed to come, thank you for sacrificing the Lady Gaga show currently underway at FNB Stadium and sacrificing the opening of Skyfall (the new Bond movie). I am unsure whether the choice of the date and the venue . . . Continue reading this article

Empangeni 3880 21 November 2012 Dear Comrade Lazola Ndamase I understand you intend participating in the Cosatu Mass Action against etolls on 30th November 2012. I am writing this letter to urge you as a comrade and a friend not to participate in such a mass action. I presume that your participation might be based on your ideological outlook and, to a certain extent, your lack of information about the details of impending implementation of etolling. In terms of the ideological outlook, . . . Continue reading this article

When the National Planning Commission (NPC) asked for public inputs while preparing its diagnostic report, I made a one paragraph submission to the effect that government should stop offering other fields of study other than Science and Accounting. It might not be a smart idea but that is not a prerequisite for holding a view. The reason I made that suggestion was because I suspected that as a country we might be having ambitions of industrializing and one day become a manufacturing hub of . . . Continue reading this article

NB: The text below is used without permission from Scott Adams' 29 September 2010 blog post. Wireless Voice Calls are Obsolete by Scott Adams Is it just me, or have cellphones become useless for voice conversations? To be fair, cellphones do work in limited situations, such as: "I WILL BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES! TEN MINUTES! I SAID I WILL BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES! HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? FUCK THIS STUPID PHONE, I'LL TEXT YOU! AND I'M DRIVING, SO I MIGHT BE DEAD IN TEN MINUTES!" Generally speaking, . . . Continue reading this article

My job requires that I do a bit of traveling, especially between Pretoria and Cape Town. I have offices in both towns and spend 40% of the time in each. As an aspirant communist, I was opposed to the Gautrain since the idea came about when Mr Sam Shilowa was Premier of Gauteng. Yes, he was once a Premier of the province. Don’t let your memory of that be erased by his disputed Presidency of his party. I believed then, like my friend, Themba, still believes now, that the Gautrain is meant to . . . Continue reading this article

I am a member of the ANCYL at Ward 23, Musa Dladla Region (North Coast), Empangeni in KwaZulu Natal. Due to the nature of my work, it makes it impossible to be a meaningful participant in the daily life of the organisation. As a result, I suspect I am mostly naive of the "bigger picture" and the "polotical context" of certain developments relating to the ANCYL. However, since I first joined the ANC in 1993 and been following political developments in the liberation movement since 1987, I feel . . . Continue reading this article