Thought Leader

“It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.” Judith Butler: Gender Trouble. At first read,…

By Athambile Masola As a product of a Eurocentric, former white educational institution, I was once very quick to embrace non-racialism (that race should no longer be used as a marker to understand our experiences). I’ve been living in Cape Town for over a year and have come face to face with the politics of…

By Jonathan Whittall On one of my first visits into Syria with MSF, I arrived on a cold night in a city with no electricity and shortages of food. A community under siege hosted me while they lived in fear, huddled into basements in an attempt to escape the continuous bombing. I saw field hospitals…

By Mark John Burke Europe is a great place, it really is. You step off your plane onto a train that takes you to your destination and once there trams and buses stand ready to take you to wherever you want. Europeans have perfected recycling and they go to great lengths to ensure everybody’s safety….

The Big Debate recently asked if artists had “sold out”. It was a fascinating episode that explored whether artists have a duty to effect positive change through their respective arts or whether their duty is only to entertain. It’s a question that can be put out to all. How am I using my position and/or…

South Africa’s primary and secondary education system is breeding a culture of mediocrity and entitlement that will ultimately undermine the growth of the country, both socially and economically. This culture of entitlement is not simply limited to the education system however, but has been surreptitiously reappropriated by our rights-based discourse so that it has become…

South Africa has succeeded to reinsert its economy back into world trade following a long period of internal political difficulties and international reactions to the apartheid regime. The ratio of trade in goods and services to GDP rose from 41% in 1994 to 53% in 2011, indicating that the international exchange of goods and services…

For ages, the country today known as South Africa was no more than a loose band of separate communities. The Nguni tribes, which settled on the Southern tip of Africa around the 10th century, neither considered themselves a single nation, nor did they consider the Khoisan people already inhibiting the area part of their collective….

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Plato says in line 38a of The Apology. The thoughts of an ancient Greek philosopher personally grappling with self-examination and intellectual exploration. But how do we examine ourselves today? What happens when you critically interrogate yourself? What are the consequences when you and I begin to call in…

It has recently been reported that an unidentified French firm is attempting to register a number of trademarks including the terms “South African rooibos” and “rooibos”. It is not the first time a foreign company tried to trademark rooibos tea. I have two problems with the fact that the French want to trademark rooibos. Firstly,…