Aakash Bramdeo is a former colleague from e.tv news who moved on to the SABC before being offered the editorship of Post in Durban — which was the newspaper which published my first story back in 1980. Before accepting the job, Aakash picked my brain as to what he could do to make the paper relevant to a wider readership. "Get a columnist who reflects the audience you're trying to attract," I said.
Shortly after accepting the position of editor, Aakash called me and asked, "when can you start?"
"View from the Top" ran in Post every week from 1 May 2011 to 9 April 2014 (which coincided with Aakash's departure from Post to edit the Sunday Tribune).
In early 1986, shortly before I left South Africa for the US, someone close to me invested R75 per month in an endowment policy set to mature after 25 years. Since then, every year, premiums increased by 10 percent to compensate for inflation.
The game of chess is widely acknowledged to have originated in India during the Gupta Empire of the 6 Century AD where it was known as chaturaṅga. Legend has it that the inventor of the game who presented it to the king was asked what he would like by way of reward.
How much money do you need to have before you know that you are rich?
Not so long ago, in a great land, there was a leader who did much good. And he had a wife who came from a noble family. But the leader took it upon himself to lay down with his maidservant, and begat a child, and in so doing split the family apart.
Do you know that by the simple act of reading these words, you are flagging yourself as a prime candidate for a range of medical disorders including cardiovascular disease and diabetes?
It is 3 am on 6 June 2011 in San Francisco, California. Down the road at Moscone Center, hundreds of pilgrims have been camped out on the sidewalk since around 8 pm yesterday. They have paid US $1599 apiece (about R11 000) for the privilege of doing so.
The world is Afrocentric. Pick up any map of this planet and, most of the time, the biggest thing we see smack dab in the middle is our continent, Africa. The world revolves around us! There we have the Americas off to the left, Eurasia above, the antipodes to the right, and Antarctica below.
Picture a state larger than Greece with a population of around 72 million people. It has a coastline of around 900 km, It has the highest number of business enterprises relative to the other members of its massive economic community, and is second in terms of total employment.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, “never speak ill of the dead”, said Chilon of Sparta in around the 6th Century BC.Chilon's original was Greek, τὸν τεθνηκóτα μὴ κακολογεῖν (tòn tethnekóta mè kakologeîn, The Latin version dates to the Italian Renaissance, from the translation of Diogenes' G
What makes a nation great? Is it the number of people who laid down their lives to fight for freedom? Is it the number of Nobel Peace Prize winners produced? Is it in the amount of free meals provided at schools? Is it the number of pregnant children receiving child support grants?
