by Hannes Wessels Soon after being mauled by a leopard ‘Danny’ was posted to Management Unit based in Wankie National Park. This arm of the department was tasked with Capture and Relocation, PAC (Problem Animal Control) and Population Control (culling) it was a mobile unit consisting of a warden, six rangers and twenty scouts. Here […]
by Hannes Wessels The new buzz-word in South Africa is ‘transformation’. It’s on everyone’s lips; politicians, newspaper-editors, talk-show radio hosts, sports-coaches and celebrities. I’m trying not to pay too much attention because I feel nauseous when I do. Obsequious radio-people are doing their bit to go with the current flow. But everybody seems to love […]
by Martin Redfern What on earth was Angela Merkel thinking when she blithely proposed taking in 800,000 (eight hundred thousand!!!) Syrian refugees in a year? Does Germany have vacant accommodation, school and hospital places that nobody knows about for this vast number of people? Chickens certainly coming home to roost with the rise of the […]
by Hannes Wessels I think it’s fair to say that had the government of Ian Smith been African and not European Rhodesia would have been hailed universally as the best governed country in Africa but it was European so it was horrible and had to go and so it did. But this judgement was […]
by Hannes Wessels I have never said I’m terribly bright. I’ve read a lot and seen a lot I suppose (I’m nearly 60 and that’s quite a stint in Africa) and made a few deductions along the way but clever I most certainly am not. I’m also bewildered, angry and despairing. So maybe those emotions […]
by Hannes Wessels In the face of possibly the biggest media-inspired lynch mob in history let’s assume those millions who have reached a guilty verdict in the best traditions of mob-rule have their vengeance assuaged and the hangman has his way with the timeous dispatch of Bronkhorst, Palmer and Ndhlovu to the hell […]
by Hannes Wessels Anyone seriously interested in how we came to be where we are in South Africa and where we might be going, has to read this book. R.W. Johnson is especially well equipped to deal with this troubling subject. He’s a highly respected academic and a brilliant historian but possibly more importantly, […]
by Andrew Donaldson THE short answer to the question that is the title of RW Johnson’s new book, How Long will South Africa Survive?, is roughly two years. That is when, he suggests, given the increasingly dire state of the economy, the country, cap-in-hand, will approach the International Monetary Fund for a bail-out which, in turn, […]
by Hannes Wessels In a thought provoking Spectator article some years ago ( 5th. February 2005) Andrew Kenny asks what defines ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ wing, what is a ‘Liberal’ and what is a ‘Conservative’. He blames the French Revolution for dumbing down political discourse by limiting the debate to two sides; the ‘left’ and […]
by Hannes Wessels Humanitarian crises are unfolding at both the top and the bottom end of Africa. ‘Down South’ anti-foreigner violence threatens to tear the country apart as the flow of illegal migrants from the wrecked economies of neighbouring countries stream seamlessly through porous, poorly controlled borders. This, at a time when the South African […]