Opinion
LitNet contributors voice their opinions about current affairs.
Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée: Days like this
2022-10-06"Yes, every now and again, you curate the most perfect book festival imaginable. And the Etienne Van Heerden Veldsoirée over the Heritage Day weekend was one such festival. With BookBedonnerd a month away, I'm worried we might have peaked too early."
When is an election free and fair?
2022-09-29"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'."
A sterile vow: Die gelofte and the transformation of myth
2022-09-20"Thus while Die gelofte is not the innocuous romance it claims to be, as a reactionary manifesto it also fails. The script is too reluctant to stare into the void of its ideological roots. It retains only the aesthetics of old-time nationalism and a vague but passionately asserted sense of victimhood."
The doomed Warsaw airlift: South Africa’s finest hour
2022-09-13"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."
South African writing on Angola: The forgotten war
2022-08-23"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."
Sisulu and Socrates
2022-07-27"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."
Hennie van Coller’s politicisation of children’s literature polemic
2022-07-25"So to Anne-Marie Beukes. Rather than distance yourself from Van Coller’s article, which is inconclusive on the allegations of homophobic tendencies, in my humble opinion, distance yourself from the Snow White storyline of the organisation you head up."
When we want success for ourselves, we must want success for others
2022-07-19"Izzart removed the laces of the sneakers and washed them separately. He tapped lukewarm water into a transparent bowl and generously sprayed TopShelf Sneaker Cleaner product on various targeted areas – everything done with precision."
“Wrong Fugard”
2022-07-13"Athol was spending increasingly longer periods working away from South Africa, but he always returned home to write. He told me he couldn’t write anywhere else. He had to be at home."
Centenary of the 1922 Bondelswarts Uprising
2022-07-13"This year marks the centenary of the Bondelswarts Uprising in Namibia – then South West Africa – between late May and early June 1922, and its prompt crushing, which resulted in Jan Smuts’s British Empire-supporting South African Party government attracting significant national and international criticism. What drew attention was the manner of this historically Nama group’s suppression ... This tragic episode followed a long history of fierce Bondelswart resistance against intrusion into their independence."
Boris: Hero to zero in three years
2022-07-13"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."
So long Boris and thanks for nothing
2022-07-08"That’s why over the past three days, 28 ministers of his government resigned and joined by another 33 deputy ministers and other high-level officials."
Two meetings, two worlds
2022-06-30"Africa’s 20th-century history shows the true cost of the world’s powerful countries locked into a struggle for dominance, economic or otherwise."
Collaboration – the moral maze of the enemy within
2022-06-20"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."
Athol Fugard is 90: A portrait of the artist as a man who jumped at opportunities
2022-06-09"The playwright sits on the stoep and watches the Cape robins and company flock into the back garden as objects around him in the cold dawn claim their shapes back from the night. The feathered visitors know when his wife has refilled the bird feeders, all cleverly designed to deny grey squirrels access. Having had their fill, the diners start the morning’s grooming and noisy chattering."
The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (BELAB): what parents should know
2022-06-06"It is important for parents to be empowered and to get involved in the debates around education. .... Parents as well as learners themselves should consider making submissions and having their voices heard."
The role of destigmatization campaigns in mental health and the legacy that is the #CrazySocks4Docs campaign
2022-06-03"For just a day, we are asked to stop and think about our mental health and the health of colleagues. We are asked to consider when we are the patient needing help, how we go about accessing that help."
Eurovision Song Contest 2022: the politics of music
2022-05-19"Shakespeare always moved with the times; he would certainly have added that music is the food of politics, not only love, judging from contemporary events."
Ukraine: Artillery – Stalin’s “god of war”
2022-05-05"On the same day Moscow’s chief propagandist warned that Russia had the capacity to ignite a 'Poseidon' underwater nuke capable of submerging Britain with a giant radioactive tsunami, I listened to Freek Robinson on LitNet interviewing Theo Venter on the likelihood of President Putin actually using an atomic bomb."
Ramadaan on Dorp Street
2022-04-28"So, as I stand on my stoep, looking up at the two rows of houses, I make the niyyah to pop around to each home and ask my neighbours what makes Ramadaan so special here on our street."