Saliem Fakir - A few weeks ago a Sunday Times exposé on highly regarded and respected former CEO of Vodacom, Alan Knott-Craig Sr. raised some interesting questions about the relationship between economics and morality. Knott-Craig Sr. was alleged to have been involved in nepotism, corporate malpractice and violations of corporate governance, according to a confidential KPMG audit report. He was accused of lavishing favours worth millions of Rand on his son and other family members. The allegations...
Richard Pithouse - The degeneration of the African National Congress has reached the point where it poses a clear and present danger to the integrity of society. Julius Malema is one of the more flamboyant examples of how a movement committed to national liberation has become, in the words of Frantz Fanon, ‘a means of private advancement’. But Malema is hardly alone. The Communication Workers Union is entirely correct to have diagnosed an ‘embedded and deep-seated Kebble-ism’ within the...
Saliem Fakir - If there were to be a beauty contest, Sarah Palin (formerly Governor of Alaska) would win over ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema by far in the looks department. However, as political celebrities for a growing anti-intellectual movement in two different parts of the world, they share a real and symbolic place in contemporary popular culture and politics. Palin, like Malema, shows no great intellectual curiosity. Their erudition of complex geopolitical and economic issues is not going...