When Self-Reliance Becomes an Excuse for Failure
Soweto's old pupils are being asked to fund repairs the state has failed to make. Sandile Memela argues Siyazenzela turns self-reliance into an alibi, making poverty pay for the failures…
ColumnistsPage 3
Disagreement Is No Licence For Savagery
You do not have to like Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma to condemn the man who wants her raped and killed. Disagree with her loudly, relentlessly, for as long as you like. The moment you reach for…
The New Sexism: Prejudice Against Men
Gender equality means more than correcting the injustices women have historically faced. It also requires confronting the assumptions that make male victims harder to believe, fathers…
Men Affected by Domestic Violence Face a Heightened Suicide Risk
For men trapped in abusive relationships, the psychological consequences can extend far beyond visible injuries. Suicidal thoughts may emerge as abuse, isolation and hopelessness…
South Africa’s Great Port Rescue Is Sinking
The Durban port crisis is not just about software, broken cranes or ships waiting offshore. It is about a national trade gateway allowed to become dangerously fragile, despite promises…
The White Persecution Fairy Tale Has a Problem With Facts
South Africa’s violent crime epidemic is real, vicious and devastating. So are farm murders. But neither proves that white South Africans are being ethnically cleansed. When the wider…
The Crisis Of Black Liberation: Majority Black Vote For Minority White Power
South Africa’s black majority is increasingly looking towards white-led political organisations for order, competence and leadership. Sandile Memela argues that this is not a rejection of…
Promises, Plans and Silence on Mass Shootings
The President's address on gender-based violence and femicide had no budget figure, no headcount, no target and no conviction goal. Instead, it offered audits, plans, and a reporting…
We Keep Counting the Dead While the Guns Keep Blazing
South Africa keeps counting the murdered while the guns keep cracking. Three mass shootings in a single week have left 38 people dead — and still the same grim cycle turns: outrage…
PSIRA Must Answer for the Money and Those Implicated Must Face the Law
PSIRA must explain how a R130 million training contract produced just 118 accreditations from 6,507 registered learners. The SIU and Hawks must follow the evidence wherever it leads…
Can A Beneficiary Of BEE In an Unjust Economic System Speak About Ethical And Impactful Leadership?
The Black elite have mastered a peculiar doublethink: speaking the language of Biko while living the lifestyle of beneficiaries of the economic order he opposed. Sandile Memela asks…
SA’s Capital Is Financing Consumption Instead Of Production
Every ribbon-cutting hides the same con. Malls don't build township wealth; they drain it straight into Sandton and Stellenbosch balance sheets. Until we build factories instead of food…
The Sandton Gunman: Money, Inferiority, And The Big Man Who Cannot Handle No
A woman’s “no” should end an unwanted advance, not trigger a threat of death. Yet for the Sandton Big Man, rejection exposes the poverty beneath the wealth: without money, status and…
Women Must Live With The Consequences Of Their Political Choices
Sandile Memela argues that women are not powerless spectators in South African politics. They are the majority of voters, and their choices help determine who governs. When corrupt…
Too Blind to See What Booze Was Doing to My Sight
My eyes were giving me serious problems, but I kept reaching for whisky because it seemed to make me feel better. I even convinced myself someone had bewitched me. Anything was easier than…
Money Does Not Buy the Right to Threaten Women
Lawrence Mudzinganyama thought the women in the powder room at Vlamo were “poor ladies”, and he was a wealthy man who could say and do as he pleased. The women’s recording turned that…
I Went To Church To Worship And Spent The Weekend Drinking
I travelled to eNanda in my white church uniform, believing I was going to worship, reconnect with my faith and spend the weekend among fellow believers. Instead, I arrived carrying…
The Ekurhuleni Murders Raise Questions Beyond GBV
As Ekurhuleni grapples with a string of murders, the urgent question is whether these killings are another expression of GBV or something darker: a predator hunting women.
The Night a Stranger Found Me Sleeping on the Roadside
It began with a motorcycle rally in Ulundi, a few drinks, and the kind of confidence only alcohol can manufacture. What followed is one of those memories that becomes harder to sneer and…
I Put Whisky in a Backpack and Rode Into the Darkness
My drinking followed me everywhere: behind the steering wheel, onto motorcycles, into filling stations and along roads between cities. I became so accustomed to surviving dangerous…