SOUTH AFRICAN civil society scored three important coups for the country recently. The judiciary and the media both survived challenges. And the multi-billion rand arms deal, something that has haunted us since the 1990’s, was given a new lease of life. News that head of the Hawks, Anwar Dramat, had[…]

TODAY over a billion Muslims around the globe, having sighted the first crescent of the moon, will begin to fast in the Holy Month of Ramadan. From just before the first thread of dawn to just after sunset, they will be compelled to abstain from food, drink, sex, vainglorious talk[…]

Reaching Discontent: Author Hagler. Publisher Mirador Publishing, London, 2010. REACHING Discontent is a rip-roaring, blood-soaked adventure story featuring Iron, a Cape Flats English teacher and former professional boxer, who is forced to use his skills to defend his honour, and to face some apartheid government ghosts. One is called the[…]

AS Europe reels from its debt disaster, and the Arab Spring turns into an exciting summer, Israel faces a crossroads. With its political house stagnating in a quagmire of right-wing coalitions, its leadership now finds itself out-of-step in the region, and besieged by imaginary demons such as Iran – a[…]

THE Protection of Information Bill or “Secrecy Bill” – its surreal passage through parliament now extended for a further two months – is an Orwellian creation befitting Animal Farm and 1984 as well as being a chilling shadow of the Apartheid era. As an attempt to re-write the clumsy Access[…]

The poem below was an answer to a challenge by colleague Irfaan Abrahams. “Write a poem for the inaugural Cape Slave in Cape Town hosted by Itheko Athletics Club,” he said. Sure. Except I forgot that I gave up trying to write verse over 20 years ago, realising that my[…]

THE other day on the Voice of the Cape radio station a maulana condemned a well-known Shaikh, a man regarded as a Grand Shaikh of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order. His central beef was that this Shaikh had supposedly claimed amongst other things – via a website – that he was[…]

TO foreigners we must sometimes appear to be a strange nation. Warm and hospitable one day, we are capable of unspeakable violence against each other the next. We were able to host the World Cup, our banking system is the match of any developed country, and yet, a five-star tour[…]

WHAT could our 2011 municipal elections have to do with the North African political earthquake, or, recent events in places such as Cote d’Ivoire or Uganda? As I watched the results unfold at the Independent Electoral Commission’s results centre in Bellville South last week, I realised that the answer was[…]

THE other day I wrote an article about the halalisation of our consumer space by Halal bodies. They were more concerned, I suggested, in making a fast buck than acting in public interest. The piece, which appeared in a mainstream publication, was a response to complaints by non-Muslims that they[…]