Kameraad Mhambi

Jeff Jarvis has an uncanny feel for how technology is shaping media, and by extension society, before its obvious to others. And he has a wonderful way to encapsulate his thoughts in punchy one liners. But like many others in tech in media he has a particular blind spot. See my Storify below. [View the [...]

If any of you were reading Mhambi four years ago during the Rugby World Cup, you would have noticed how negative I was about South Africa. We won the tournament, but it did not lift my mood. No not at all. Four years later and we don’t have a half bad team. In fact, in [...]

A UN report has declared internet access a basic human right, rallying against states disconnecting citizens. The UN is backed buy the street. Four out of 5 adults in a BBC survey believed that internet access is indeed a basic right. But on what basis could this be? If rights are basic and inalienable, how [...]

It’s been a while since I posted on this blog. I have however been very much active watching events in Libya and the rest of African unfold. Exciting times and its hard to track everything. Last night the video below caught my eye. It is of a rapper that goes by the name Ikonoklasta and [...]

Follow back Until very recently, in the field I work in – social media – there was an orthodoxy. It went like this: If somebody follows you on Twitter, follow them back. Leading the charge were social media luminaries like Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse (better known as ProBlogger). Even veteran tech bloggers like Robert [...]

Today as I strolled into a bookshop on Broadway Market Hackney, I saw a book by Mute. It immediately pricked my interest. Mute is the magazine of digital media theory in the UK and Europe. Round these trendy parts it’s the magazine that any thinking progressive person, with an interest in digital media, must have [...]

Why? Helen Zille is an exceptionally brave, tenacious and rare politician and deserves all the plaudits she gets. When I interviewed the first white South African to refuse to serve in the SA army, Anton Ebehard said that the only journalist that came to visit him regularly, and support him, was Helen Zille. It was [...]

Wael Ghonim (http://twitter.com/ghonim), marketing manager for Google in the Middle East is the secret man behind the Khaled Said Facebook page, that played such an influential role in formenting protests in Egypt since the summer of 2010. Wael, who was just released this afternoon, gave an emotional interview – it even had me in tears [...]

A cursory acquaintance with this blog is all that’s needed to know that I’m a fan of Die Antwoord. The creative crew from South Africa is releasing a new album soon, and that has me very excited. But after having listened to the first release, Fok julle naaiers, I’m not that impressed. I don’t mind [...]

South African identities are vying with each other to claim victimhood. There is political capital to be made in victimhood. Here I Storified a debate I had on Twitter about it all. View “The victim race” on Storify

The SA police shot a protestor at a very close range directly with what appears to be a rubber bullet (see second 16 and 17 of the clip) and then set upon him. The man called Andries Tatane died at the scene in the Free State town of Ficksburg yesterday. Here is a report from [...]

UK literary critic Sam Leith has dubbed Facebook the Reuters of Inanity: …a news agency for stuff nobody wants to know. “Dave is playing on Facebook. Dave is a bit annoyed. Dave is going for a drink. Dave has found a toothsome bit of cheese under the nail on his big toe.” What readers might [...]

Today in City Press, and Afrikaner journalist I respect very much, Adriaan Basson wrote a great piece in City Press. There’s much I agree with, why does Afriforum, the Afrikaner civil rights group not team up with Abahlali baseMjondolo for example? But this post is about the bits in it with which I disagree. Much [...]

Samantha Vice’s paper on what it means to be white in South Africa has sent the South African Twitter buzzing. She sums up why this is pretty well herself: If we are a problem, we should perhaps concentrate on recovering and rehabilitating our selves. I shall suggest that because of peculiarities of the South African [...]

Die Antwoord reaches a new one. This time they have teamed up with the king of uber disturbed US suburbia, Harmony Korine – to bring us a little short movie tilted Umshini Wam. For those of you unfamilar with South Africa, Umshini Wam is a song dating back from the struggle against apartheid, a favourite [...]

“Most movements that are self-described as radical are highly urbanistic, or nationalistic, or oriented to obsolete class structures, or to central bureaucratic planning. The changes that we can see on the horizon are much more drastic than that . . . People who think about social change in traditional political terms cannot begin to imagine [...]