In a recent issue of the Mail & Guardian’s excellent ‘Friday’ Arts supplement dedicated to the question of masculinity, our editor MR SIPHIWE MPYE contributed a deeply personal account of his path in being part of the solution to gender based violence. We publish here an updated version. “South African men are trash, that’s who we are. If we don’t…
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Politics
An open letter to Khoisan 6/Napoleon Webster
Marikana activist Mr Napoleon Webster, otherwise known as Khoisan 6, has been languishing in jail for a hundred days without bail. His sin, the state charges, is the mob killing of an allegedly corrupt official in the volatile North West town. There is evidence to suggest however, that Webster was not even in the vicinity of…
The painful death of a giant
MR CIKO THOMAS came of age in Port Elizabeth in the 80s, under the heat of the struggle for South Africa’s liberation. The leaders of the African National Congress and other organisations he knew and supported then, were of a rare breed. As we wake up to protests against the current leader of a once glorious organisation, he…
A comrade, unifier and true patriot
Rev. Dr Makhenkesi Stofile – South African struggle stalwart, diplomat and the sports minister who led the 2010 Soccer World Cup – was ushered into the next realm in rousing fashion at his Fort Hare University in Alice in the Eastern Cape this week. Friend, colleague and deputy Minister of Finance MR MCEBISI JONAS delivered the…
Justice deferred and the assassination of Thomas Sankara
On what would have been his 66th Birthday, we remember Thomas Sankara, The Upright Man. The founding president of Burkina Faso who was a man of the people, champion of accountable governance, political humility and gender parity, was assassinated on October 15, 1987 in a conspiracy widely understood to have been led by his closest confidante, Blaise…
Sobukwe’s uneasy sleep
As we observe what would have been Pan Africanist Congress of Azania founding President Robert Sobukwe’s 91st birthday, MR SIPHIWE MPYE writes him a note on the state of his beloved Azania. Dear Prof. “We are witnesses today of cold and calculated brutality and bestiality, the desperate attempts of a dying generation to stay…