The New Frontline

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01 March 2010 12:32

There is no real beneficiary from the new racism

There is only a loser; the regular humble South African who needs a growing economy.

JOHANNESBURG - I stiffened the sinews, clenched my teeth and tackled the 134 comments addressed to two recent columns. One was by me: "if today's fashion is ‘give the job to the black oke!' tomorrow's fashion will be ‘bring back the whiteys!' ". The other was Frans Cronje on Politicsweb saying much the same thing, though better researched: "the cliché of South Africa's future and irony of its recent past [is] that affirmative action disempowered its greatest proponents while empowering its most fervent critics."

I expected wading through these 134 comments to be sewer-repair work, clothes pegs on the nose. How nice to discover that no, comment-lines are not only populated by bile-and-imbecility merchants, there are real people with sincerity and ideas, explori...

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16 February 2010 12:35

Let's move beyond race or else we're doomed

Denis Beckett provides scenarios on how to move beyond our current predicament.

JOHANNESBURG - The worst, the deepest, the most indefensible sin that a columnist can commit is to say "I told you so". It should be in the contract: "I told you so" means instant beheading.

Unless you use the dreary phrase "as I said in my column of nineteenvoetsek..." For that you get water-torture first.

You now know that I am about to say "I told you so". And I claim Beginner's Exemption because I don't believe (!?) I've ever done this thing before.

As I said in piles of nineteenvoetsek columns: when we started to thrust melanined people into roles that they wouldn't fill if they didn't have the melanin, we guaranteed that melanin would later become a handicap.

Let me say that in plain Seffricenglish: if today's fashion is "give the job to the b...

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26 January 2010 00:44

What exactly can Africa do for Haiti?

Denis Beckett wonders just how absurd the idea is.

JOHANNESBURG - That I made it to the Nelson Mandela Foundation for the lunch of "Africa For Haiti" was thanks to cabin fever. I'd had seven days chained to a laptop and I needed human buzz or I was going to need a straitjacket.

Up pops a short-notice invite to a press conference, and hey, why not? I'm only a sometime taker for Very Politically Correct functions, but sometimes is right, like it's sometimes right to hear the other lot too.

Moreover, there's no nicer corner of PC-ness than the Mandela Foundation. The vibe is great and so is the kitchen. Occasionally they trundle the old man in, too, to smile at everybody for a minute or two. And I'll tell you this much: nobody, not even the webcretins with their anonymous bigoted bile, fails to feel dew in the eye and a lum...

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