Category: July 2016

I grew up on a farm.  We had no electricity and very little money to be able to buy a fridge so we could not keep vegetables in the house overnight.  We used to harvest fresh beans and herbs.  Pumpkin was the only vegetable that we could keep for days on end.  We had animals. …

On 9 August, 1956 South Africa saw the staging of a huge peaceful march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria by 20 000 women in opposition to the extension of the pass laws to women.  This was done at a time when the country had declared a state of emergency.  This meant that no meetings could…

This is what Abram Louis Fischer popularly known as Bram Fisher who represented Nelson Mandela and others at the Rivonia Trial and passed on in May 1975,  said at his own trial, “I am on trial, my Lord, for my political beliefs and for the conduct which those beliefs drove me to. My Lord, when…

  The recent attacks on innocent people in major cities of the Middle East countries has once again raised the notion of religious differences being at the root of brutality.   There is also a fear that South Africans could also be aiding these people. We believe that both these notions are false, as all the…

My mother used to tell us a story of a lion and a mouse. The lion is big and strong and the mouse is small and soft. One day the mouse was in a trap crying out for help, the lion was passing by and initially hesitated but the mouse pleaded and promised to return…

The dictionary meaning of democracy is the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves. On the other hand what does anarchy mean? According to the dictionary, it means a situation of…