i received an email from a friend of mine on Facebook who is asking some questions that relate quite strongly to some stuff i have been giving a lot of thought to, especially this last week. i think it's a bit of a minefield, to be honest. But i also think it's high time we stepped into this one: Morning 😊 I've been thinking about ANGER and VIOLENCE. I think that so many people dismiss [...]
So yesterday i visited my first ever stroke victim's support group. i should perhaps clarify up front that i have not had a stroke. My friend Stephanie runs the group and invited me to come and check it out after i had an encounter with a stroke victim at the clinic she runs speech therapy at, which led to this status last week: i walked into a clinic today to drop a book off for [...]
"What a chop!" "What a flippin punk!" "Oi!"Â These are statements i utter in my brain space, and sometimes out loud, when young people who i know are passionate and committed to the cause of racism interruption and poverty transformation and reconciliation and restitution jump on to social media and act like... well, like teenagers really, little kids on a bad day. And it happens a lot. To be fair, i imagine i inspire my [...]
Jacob Zuma is still the president. Not too many surprises there i don't think, although the 21 vote margin may have been a lot closer than many people suspected. But it certainly was no Brexit or Trump sideswipe [maybe we're saving that for 2019!] and the result of the vote of no confidence certainly revealed some things. While we try to figure out what that means and doesn't mean, here is a repeat of yesterday's [...]
First dates are all about making that good first impression and so we asked you to put your heads together to come up with some places that may not be the best for that. And you did! #WellOfCourseYouDidDontBeRidiculous [The Story So Far: Every Wednesday at 12 noon South African time [6am EDT] an inspired and growing number of brilliant, creative and absolutely fun people from all around the world take part in what is called [...]
This is an important one for the church to get. Because the evidence seems to suggest that so many people are missing it. There is a big difference between criticism [especially the negative kind] and critique and while both feel sometimes necessary, for the church to embrace critique is crucial: Criticism: [negative] the expression of disapproval of someone or something on the basis of perceived faults or mistakes. Criticism: [positive]Â the analysis and judgement of the [...]
It has been exactly three months since i posted about the Angus Buchan prayer time in Bloemfontein which i wrote about here. Which got a lot of people mad. How dare i challenge such an obviously God thing and good people with good intentions gathering together to pray for the country? How can that possibly be a bad thing? If i remember correctly, my writing on the prayer event was more questioning than condemning and [...]
What do you see in this picture? A young woman looking away from you? Or a much older woman looking to the left? You're sitting in a business meeting with five men and five woman around a boardroom table. One of the women makes a suggestion which is largely ignored. Ten minutes later, her male colleague makes what is in reality pretty much the same suggestion, and it is met with great support and encouraging [...]
Having spoken about and encouraged the #NotOnOurWatch hashtag commitment for probably over a year now, i just had my second big encounter [you can read about the first one here], which i wrote about on Facebook: Climb out of my car at Canal Walk to see this decently large tattooed white guy swearing at a smaller foreign black man car guard cos of some entitled not-getting-the-information-he-was-looking-for nonsense so I shouted at him and walked over [...]
'Howzit buddy, just got to Bootleggers.' [Whatsapp from Lukhanyo Neer] What a great message to receive. i had been looking forward to connecting with Lukhanyo for a while, since i had met him at The Justice Conference in March and again after interacting on some #MenAreTrash vibes on Facebook. This week tbV [the beautiful Val] has been away at a retreat and i have filled a lot of my time with meetings and connections and [...]
