On attacking Tutu: Bile, heaps of audacity and heart burn
Not too long ago Bishop Tutu (and many others like him) were taking on the moral corruption of apartheid. Particularly Bishop Tutu became a voice of reason and hope at a time that many thought that...
View Article‘Don’t call me a kaffir’
Recently, about five-thirty in the afternoon when everybody was stuck in traffic, 5FM exposed its listeners to the following lyrics: Kom hier, kaffir, kom hier! Hoekom het jy nie my kar skoongemaak...
View ArticleEn route to Afghanistan
I was offered a job in Afghanistan. Exactly what kind of work is not at issue. It was everyday stuff, though the context was unusual. Unsurprisingly the family was not impressed and I had to decide...
View ArticleForgiveness in Afghanistan
Kabul airport was a run-down, high-security version of “Bloemfontein international”. It was dotted with military freight planes and helicopters, hidden behind concrete walls and sandbags. One’s baggage...
View ArticleTrust in Afghanistan
“Don’t trust anybody,” an old consultant told me one morning in the corridor of the government office, sotto voce and all that. “I mean — anybody.” He had been in the country for more than five years...
View ArticleFear in Afghanistan
I had moved to a new guesthouse which looked and felt like a death trap. I had to travel even further to work and the first morning, just to complicate matters further, there was a demonstration at the...
View ArticleThe ancestors strike back
The angry whispering of my ancestors, black, tan and white, refer. They speak about the words of some Deployed Writers in this middle-class space about race and hatred and the Great Juggernaut; the...
View ArticleApostasy and ducks in Afghanistan
“He’s the man!” Barham, my young Afghan colleague, said one morning as we inched through the godforsaken rush-hour traffic of Kabul, rocking through the frozen potholes. Barham proceeded to tell me...
View ArticleHappy endings in Afghanistan
“All that has to happen is for the Taliban to lob a couple of hand grenades over the walls of one of the guesthouses,” the security consultant told me. He traced an imaginary trajectory over the roof...
View ArticleFemen: From enthusiasm to disenchantment
A wave of popular interest and sympathetic media coverage helped the “radical” Ukrainian feminist movement Femen, known for their topless “attacks” on symbols of the “patriarchy” (religion, “dictators”...
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