Opinion
LitNet contributors voice their opinions about current affairs.
Ethics and the rise of the hustler state | Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée 2023
2024-03-12In this video, he asks the viewer to consider how the hunger and humiliation of concentration camps forced individuals into unethical behaviour. Then he turns the spotlight to decades of poverty and humiliation in South Africa.
The South African Copyright Amendment Bill: Imagining how the CAB might affect musicians
2024-03-11"Creators should be incentivised to keep making art, while at some point in time it should be enjoyed by the public at large so that new ideas can be expressed."
Seen elsewhere: Facebook remains a constant miracle in my life
2024-03-09"If you’re lucky, once in a while a truly luminous soul will cross your path."
Who can save us from political demagogues?
2024-03-07"The future of our political direction depends on those with enough courage to venture out into something new and convince the majority of eligible voters, who are in a stupor due to political choice despair. My friend counts himself among these, whom he amusingly terms the 'electile dysfunctions'."
Kruger’s earring
2024-03-06"So, you can well imagine my absolute delight when a pristine, popular, illustrated account of the Boer War, which had lain unread in a Welsh attic for over 100 years, was gifted to me by a good friend recently. This contained the photo of Kruger proudly and romantically advertising his earring, like a latter day Raleigh, or Drake."
Goodbye and hello: Zimbabwean publishing future and past
2024-02-29"The reign of these juggernauts was quite a golden age, but not without its problems."
Election 2024 – The DA’s rescue plan for South Africa: a review
2024-02-28"Their concerns about diminishing state debt are well motivated and should be taken seriously, and their manifesto includes much of interest and many good ideas. But the last bolts need tightening, the final budget needs better costing, and they should give us, even if in appendices, much more detail about their thinking."
A year of elections, multiple challenges and choices
2024-02-27"Here, on the southern tip of Africa, political commentators, journalists, authors, philosophers, economists, thinkers and columnists unanimously agree that the 29 May 2024 election in South Africa will be a make-or-break event."
Election 2024: The Economic Freedom Fighters’ election manifesto
2024-02-20"Thus, these many commitments are not commitments to study and then decide on action; they are clearly phrased as actions that have been decided on, and must now be seen through. We know where we are with the EFF."
The world at war: Choppy waters ahead
2024-02-15"It feels a bit unreal putting these words on paper, but a phantom is looming ever larger in the global consciousness. Something is definitely going on; turbulent daily news events describe geopolitical tensions of all sorts – military build-ups and diplomatic stand-offs."
Durban’s water crisis: far more than pipes and taps at stake
2024-02-15"For months now, the water and sanitation (WSS) unit of eThekwini (Durban) municipality has been in the news for all the wrong reasons."
Initiation practices and other undesirable things
2024-02-01"If there is anything in common between the rigour of the English boarding school system I grew up in and the staunch Calvinism of Afrikaners of, say, Stellenbosch University, it is the belief that young men in particular need to be toughened up to prepare them for life. It is the reason why, though known to authorities, these rituals and rites of passages are tolerated and ignored until they go too far, as they sometimes do."
Hero in hiding: Jeff Morphew, forgotten South African in the fight for democracy
2024-01-30"Democracy is at risk of being replaced in many cases with despotic oligarchies and fascist elites. Our ‘imperfect, but still the best system of government’, to paraphrase Churchill’s definition of democracy, is even under threat in the EU, where right-wing parties with dubious links to history are poised to make electoral gains this year."
Revisiting Bloke Modisane, from Sophiatown to Gaza: #III – On escape
2024-01-30"I suggested that it might be useful to think of Modisane’s history like a kind of monstrous Large Language Model (LLM) – a bizarre and monstrous simulacrum of human intelligence trained on our basest reflexes and insecurities."
Don’t touch me on my context
2024-01-30"You can’t go back in time to kill your grandfather with an axe because you dislike the historical context he furnished you with. If you could, he could have done the same to his grandfather, until the only ancestor remaining to provide you with a validating context would be lonely old Adam playing with his snake in the Garden of Eden."
Revisiting Bloke Modisane, from Sophiatown to Gaza: #2 On violence, on history
2024-01-23"The question is ultimately a simple one: which groups of people has social media made it harder for you to see as fully human?"
Revisiting Bloke Modisane, from Sophiatown to Gaza: #1 On pain
2024-01-17"We have no idea how things are ultimately going to look in the Holy Land, but I believe we can use Blame me on history as a text to think about the durability of the human spirit, how to be witnesses to pain, and how to be witnesses who are also implicated in that pain."
A path towards true humanity
2024-01-11"I wonder where South Africa would have been, had countries like Cuba, Ireland, Zambia, Angola or the Scandinavian nations not supported us against the murderous National Party’s apartheid regime."
RIP Henry Kissinger – influential American diplomat who shaped policy on southern Africa
2023-12-05"Kissinger arguably saved the world from nuclear war by defusing geopolitical crises on several occasions during the height of the Cold War."
Nothing about us without us
2023-12-04"As a country we must stop paying lip service by having commissions and task teams and Zoom meetings. We need to implement existing policies effectively, and we need it to happen now!"