www.inside-politics.org

Analysis of and commentary on South African politics from a liberal perspective.

Tag: Archive

The media’s short-sighted hostility to the DA’s 2009 ‘Stop Zuma’ campaign


I am going to try and post to Inside Politics more often. One way of doing that, relatively easily for me, is to post some of the many archives I have produced over the years, perhaps with a bit of analysis upfront. Here follows an example: a collection of quotes from the commentariat on the DA’s 2009 ‘Stop Zuma’ posters, which were widely derided as evidence of fearmongering, poor strategy and the unfair personalisation of the election. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, the campaign and the message were clearly both important and prescient. The DA’s message is often overlooked in favour of such considerations as style and tone. Nothing makes the case better than the story of the ‘Stop Zuma’ posters.

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Burning books: The African way


imagesFEATURE: Much has rightly been made of the destruction of key texts and manuscripts held at Timbuktu; much less of the spate of library burning in South Africa over the last four years. Why is that? I have compiled an archive of libraries burnt in South Africa during this period and, in the piece below, argue that while we are quick to express passion about ‘African’ cultural ideals, we have little to say about book burning in our country and what it says about our actual cultural attitude to knowledge and education.

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Maintenance


MAINTENANCE: This message is essentially for those people who subscribe to Inside Politics via e-mail. I shall over the course of the weekend upload to the site a range of older articles I have written in the past and which I would like to archive on Inside Politics – between 10 and 15 pieces. For each one you shall get an e-mail, for which I apologise. I am doing it over the weekend, so that it will be less burdensome for you than it would during a weekday. On the upside, on Monday, hopefully there will be a range of articles you might not have read before and which, although somewhat outdated, might still be of interest to you. I think they are all important and, in the future, will be helpful for me to refer back to. Thank you for your understanding.

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