Kameraad Mhambi

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 [...]

If I had a dollar for every person that came to this blog every day off the back of the search “the meaning of Wat Kyk Jy” I could probably buy a juicy burger in my favourite burger bar every night. Anyway, here is DIE ANTWOORD: Wat kyk Jy is Afrikaans and literally translates to [...]

First, today my blog sent you an email test by mistake. Apologies for that. Update on Meerkat We have made a more complete set of wireframes for the Meerkat project. If you know any developers that would like to work on a corruption reporting tool, point them our way.

So hardly a week went by after I did my interview with Dan Roodt and I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been watching Mr. Roodt on Facebook. I’ve been watching what he writes and the comments he receives from others. Not only is he a suurgat (sourpuss), he is venynig (he enjoys causing pain), and he [...]

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 [...]

What’s up with Die Antwoord? Are they authentic? And more specifically. Do they rip off other people’s work? We are all familiar with the first set of anti-Antwoord complaints. That they were disparaging Afrikaner culture. That they were appropriating and exploiting coloured culture. Snot, I said. They were a wonderful fusion of the two. So [...]

A few weeks ago Murray Hunter emailed me. How hard would it be to set up a tool to combat corruption he asked. Well I said, lets meet. It is something I have been thinking about for some time. Over a few beers we discussed the issue with Adriaan Pelzer. I was very much in [...]

Rian Malan, South Africa’s serial traitor of the heart put it eloquently in the Telegraph this week: “South Africa has an extraordinary ability to make fools of those who attempt to predict its future. As I coasted into the airport’s shiny new parking lot, I realised that I’d shot myself in the foot yet again. [...]

“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 [...]

My dad passed away last month. Three years ago I took him to watch the quarter finals of the rugby world cup in France. This is a little tribute to him. Interestingly enough, my dad was born during the great depression, and died during the current crisis. He was by no means a perfect man. [...]

In the last two days we’ve been treated to such ill informed, bad and reductionist journalism about the Dutch and their relationship to Afrikaners and culpability for colonialism and apartheid, that I just had to quickly write this blog post. So what exactly is the relationship? Fact 1 The Dutch state, the Netherlands, never decided [...]

This week I saw on Twitter that Dan Roodt was visiting London. I tweeted it and was Retweeted by Murray Hunter: RT @wildebees SA right organising, Dan Roodt now in London after Belgian visit.

Our default position should be that truth and openness is good for societies. Only in very special circumstances should the public be denied information. This is why, in the past, when newspapers received these kinds of leaks that Wikileaks are now recieving, more often than not they published them. And democratic governments in the West [...]

The long awaited collaboration by Die Antwoord with Diplo is out. The song is very good, although personally I prefer Ninja’s own production over Diplo’s. As for the content. There’s more phalluses than you can shake a stick at. The Xhosa rapping in the middle will cause quite a stir. None more so for the [...]

Beebop, who often comments on this blog has regularly put the question to me, why don’t whities stop whining and do something positive? That is a very good question. Last Sunday Esebius Mackaiser took on this theme, after a debate between Antjie Krog and Rian Malan. Their respective takes on the phenomenology of whiteness differ [...]

I just spotted via a Tweet from @Sisiwami this new documentary coming out about one of my favourite cities in the world. And where I was born. And thank goodness its not made by an outsider. Here’s the teaser. It’s called Unhinged and it looks interesting.