Would any of these viewers have photographed this painting if the comment from the Presidency had been ‘no comment’?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ferial Hafajee writes eloquently, subtly and critically (as always) on the debate between ‘the personal right to dignity’ and the right for freedom of expression (and so public debate and critique): http://www.citypress.co.za/Columnists/How-a-painting-divided-a-nation-20120527   I have currently not had [...]

Boekehuis has been an institution in Jozi in terms of providing a public space allowing for informed, engaged and intelligent public debate. It is a sad inditement that the holding company, the large profitable corporate Media 24, seemed to look only at the bottom of  line of profit,  rather than seeing Boekehuis and what it offered in [...]

See  http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/blog/my_south_africa_by_jonathan_jansen.html#

Mark Gevisser wrote about South African identity in both the build up to the World Cup  Cup http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article439527.ece/I-want-to-imagine-the-SA-of-my-dreams  as well as after the final whistle had been blown:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/10/south-africa-unites-over-football . See his latest take  on what it means to be a South African in late 2010:  http://www.arttimes.co.za/news_read.php?news_id=2683 

WHAT? SATURDAY VOICES AT BOEKEHUIS WHEN? SATURDAY 21 August 2010, 12:00 for 12:30 TOPIC: William Gumede, author of the book, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC in conversation with Sakhela Buhlungu, sociologist and expert in the field of labour studies, about his new book, A Paradox of Victory COSATU and [...]

It will take three to five years to see the economic benefits of the World Cup, a Human Sciences Research Council academic says. However, it was too early to tell how great these benefits would be, said Dr Udesh Pillay, head of research on service delivery at the HSRC. He added that the economic benefits [...]

The World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands was the most-watched football game in US television history, drawing 24.3 million viewers, said Nielsen. According to a report on the IoL site, the final on the ABC network and Spanish-language Univision outdrew the June 26 US-Ghana match, which attracted 19.4 million viewers, and the 18.1 [...]

John Carlin, the author of ’Playing the Enemy’, says all those stories, promoted by FIFA, among others, about the World Cup being the 1995 rugby World Cup all over again, about healing racial wounds, uniting the fractured nation and so forth, were off the mark. ’It was much, much better than that. What we saw [...]

SA’s SWC stadia stun the world   From Sport24  12th July 2010
South Africa’s Soccer World Cup stadiums have stunned the globe’s largest sporting audience with audacious style although critics say a developing country can ill afford such extravagance and some will be white elephants.  When South Africa won the right to stage the tournament six years [...]

The reports on South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup coming in from all over the world are overwhelmingly positive  with certain common threads weaving through most of the responses. The substance of most articles is celebratory – describing the connections made across race and class; the nation-building role of the event and the patriotism [...]