Litnet

"The Ukraine-Russia war drags on, slowly but surely getting more dangerous as Western weapons pour in and the Russian army suffers absurd losses but keeps grinding into battle anyway."

"What sustains churchgoers then, other than blind faith? What empirical evidence is there for the existence of God? Perhaps if there was something more tangible for this woke and plugged-in generation concretely to put their hands on, then they may come to believe, as Kate Forbes does. I decided to put the question to ChatGPT."

"What’s gone wrong with Mandela’s ANC?"

"Dignified to the last is how she will be remembered."

"The legendary Boer War hero, Koos de la Rey, was a kind of Volodymyr Zelensky of his day – a 'bittereinder' tactical genius (he introduced trench warfare to South Africa) who refused to surrender to Lord Roberts after the capture of Pretoria, and tormented the British imperial army to the 'bitter end'."

"This is the traditional end of the seasonal (and astrological) cycle when we take stock of what lies ahead. New Year’s resolutions are wheeled out, and everyone has a crystal ball."

"But crossing the Rubicon, as always, carries risks. PW Botha lasted a few years more, Julius Caesar had his Ides of March moment not long after – and Xi Jinping?"

"The bottom line of Ramaphosa’s state visit to King Charles and new prime minister Rishi Sunak is that adroit footwork is now required by all parties to mitigate the effects of the global polycrisis, defined by historian Adam Tooze as a situation consisting of multiple crises, the whole being more dangerous than the sum of the parts. The danger is the deep global recession now taking shape ...."

"How, one might ask in disbelief, could one of the most civilised countries in the west, the cradle of the Renaissance, throw in its lot with such a dangerous man as Putin? It is almost impossible to imagine such a thing. But that is the question being asked now, and the answer to Italy's future must surely lie in the character and beliefs of the new prime minister."

"I was interested to read that several ANC Youth League officials have flown to Russia to monitor the controversial referendum being held to legitimise the 'annexation' of the Ukrainian territory that Putin’s army is occupying. The referendum has been discredited in advance by most of the world as a sham, but this hasn’t deterred the ANC’s intrepid task team from acting as 'international observers'."

"The Polish government commemorates the sacrifice of the SAAF airmen in their attempt to relieve Warsaw, to this day. Next year is the eightieth anniversary of the doomed Warsaw mission, and it will be interesting to see how the occasion is marked by the present South African government."

"All wars in history, from the Greek heroes onwards, spawn such intense memoirs, long and short. They are a bedrock of classic literature. We are fascinated by them. They invite us to eavesdrop on the confessional. They are a form of writing therapy, a way of laying the ghost, and a psychiatrist is not needed to tell us that. But there is also more to it. War memoirs involve all of us, including the bystanders. They make the reader complicit."

"This brings me to the strange case of Sisulu and Socrates, who have become unlikely bedfellows in this fight to speak your mind, albeit from diametrically opposed corners."

"So, what went wrong? A number of unfortunate coincidences, probably. Most notably, being a man whose reputation as a true libertarian in the John Stuart Mill mould was established, he himself fell foul of too much libertarianism when it entered the sphere of his own life, which, when he became prime minister, made his private behaviour a public spectacle."

"Painful choices had to be made, if Meyer was to save both his house and his delicate wife from the privations of the crowded concentration camps, rife with disease and primitive sanitation. In Meyer’s view, the war was taking too brutal a toll, and would be lost in any event. Honourable surrender was the best way forward."