Practical Reason blog

This blog contains some of my opinion pieces and short essays about politics. I will also place topical personal and political writing here.

Some of my books and edited collections are listed in the sidebar to the right. I have tried to indicate their intended audiences.

The home page shows deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and NUM general secretary Frans Baleni at a NUM meeting in Boksburg in 2015.

In the 2014 photo above, taken at the Presidential Guesthouse, President Zuma had just returned from Moscow, amidst rumours of illness or even poisoning. He seemed fragile and vulnerable. This did not last.

Anthony Butler

Chris Van Wyk

Beware of white ladies

in chemise dresses

and pretty sandals

that show their toes. Beware of these ladies when spring is here.

They have strange habits Of infesting our townships with seeds of:

geraniums pansies poppies carnations. They plant their seeds in our eroded slums cultivating charity in our eroded hearts making our slums look like floral Utopias. Beware!

Beware of seeds and plants.

They take up your oxygen

and they take up your time

and let you wait for blossoms

and let you pray for rain

and you forget about equality

and blooming liberation

Chris van Wyk, It Is Time to Go Home. Johannesburg, Ad Donker, 1979,

Merkel

President Cyril Ramaphosa meets Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Federal Republic of Germany for bilateral talks ahead of the G20 Compact with Africa and G20 Investment Summit which take place tomorrow 30 October 2018, in Berlin.South Africa, with Germany Co-Chair the Advisory Group on the Compact with Africa that was initiated under Germany’s Presidency of the G20 in 2017.Germany and South Africa enjoy a robust and growing trade relationship.In 2017, Germany remained South Africa’s 3rd largest global trading partner.