Opinion
Better luck next time
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- 08 September 2008
Twelve-year-old Themba has a dream. He dreams about making it into his school’s football team. It would be his entry into the world of the sport, and lead him to his other dream, to be just like his hero, South African football legend Lucas Radebe, writes Khanyi Magubane.
The fantasy Olympics
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- 01 September 2008
South Africa may have brought a single medal home from the Beijing Olympics, but if we have icons for the games they would be the Blade Runner, Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who runs on bladelike carbon fibre artificial limbs, and Natalie du Toit, another disabled athlete who moved up from the Paralympics to the real deal, writes Kevin Davie.
The power of imagination
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- 25 August 2008
Until 1994, when South Africans queued from the crack of dawn to cast a democratic vote for the first time in their lives, it seemed impossible that such a thing could happen. It also seemed impossible that an African country would host the world’s greatest football showpiece. And now it will happen in 2010, writes Justice Malala.
Making South Africa truly modern
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- 18 August 2008
In conversations, the same sentiment is repeated over and over, whether around the supper or breakfast table or when answering an opinion poll: South Africa is in decline. Can the country escape this sticky, despondent situation? writes JP Landman.
Are South Africans happy?
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- 11 August 2008
One of the oddities of living in a developing country is a real dearth of data on what people really think. So I was intrigued recently by a rare poll into the views of a cross-section of South Africans. How would these views compare to the picture a Martian might get by reading the press? writes Tim Cohen.
South Africa's festival of spirit
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- 28 July 2008
A trip with friends to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival was excellent muti for my recent bout of national blues, a lovely reminder that there isn’t any shortage of contemporary creative spirit about. And that creativity always has the power to heal, unite and inspire, writes Bridget Hilton-Barber.
Why the bad mood, South Africa?
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- 21 July 2008
Rising incomes mean resources to tackle problems, create jobs, fight poverty and build infrastructure. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it is about per capita incomes, stupid. Over the next seven years per capita incomes can rise as much as during the last 14 years. This will trump the negative fallout from politics, writes economist JP Landman.
