Soweto is bursting with events, but its economy remains highly skewed

This morning was the 4th annual Soweto Events Forum Imbizo, at the Soweto Theatre in Jabulani. Present were a number of event organisers, venues and suppliers to the industry with an interest in seeing Soweto increase its share of the events staged in Gauteng in the coming years. I was elected Vice-Chairman of the Forum last year and presided over the meeting with Chairman Ma-Events (Bheki) Twala.

Pictured are Mandla Baloyi, my colleague at Adele Lucas Promotions, Cian McClelland and John Sithole of Zindala Zombili, Toby Chance and Ma-Events Twala.

South Africa: the future is in your hands

Good morning, gooi more, sawubona, dumelang.

South Africa is a great country. It has enormous human and natural resources. Properly nurtured, they have the potential to make us a winning nation. This year, on the eve of celebrating 20 years of democracy, we need to remind ourselves of that more than ever.

Mfecane: The Image of Africa and the Land Question

On February 13^th 2013, Dr Pieter Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus and Deputy Minister of Agriculture, gave a speech in Parliament inflaming a decades-old debate. It concerned the question how much of the land that is now South Africa was populated by blacks when European settlers began migrating north and east from the Cape Colony in the early to mid-1800s. His speech caused uproar, drawing a stinging rebuttal from President Zuma and a question by Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu asking whether it was Parliamentary for a member ‘to blatantly distort history.”

Under starter's orders.....

This weekend two of the main opposition parties launched their manifestos to the party faithful and the media - the EFF in Tembisa on Saturday and the DA in Polokwane on Sunday. Both conducted themselves according to the rules of election campaigning, which in the case of the DA is not surprising. In the case of the EFF perhaps it is. We should be relieved.

Remember, we have children too

On Monday I spent an enjoyable couple of hours watching a game of cricket between a visiting 11 from Eton College in England, and St John's College Johannesburg. This was at the invitation of the Old Etonian Association, of which I have been a member since 1978. When I left the game just after tea Eton were getting a drubbing at the hands of some skillful and aggressive St John's batsmen and bowlers. By then the conversation had  turned to the relative merits of a private school education.

Success, entrepreneurship and racial identity

On Friday I attended a very inspirational short seminar organised by the National Small Business Chamber (NSBC) at The Forum in Bryanston, sponsored by Absa. The theme was "Think beyond a job, create your own." In other words, how do you move from an employed or unemployed mindset to an employer or self-employed mindset and then put it into action? With the unemployment rate in South Africa reaching crisis proportions, this is a question on everyone's lips that demands urgent and effective answers.

Mrs Thatcher's landslide 1983 election victory

Britain went to the polls on June 9th 1983 and handed Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Party a landslide victory. With the defeat of the Argentinian junta in the Falklands conflict fresh in people's minds, her determination to rid the country of defeatism, and the destructive effects of socialism forcing Labour onto the defensive, the victory was never in doubt, only the scale of it.

If I Were The President - an idea whose time has come, 13 years later

In 2001 Jim Morgan, who I'd known for around 6 years and is a very politically aware and astute American living in SA, came up with the idea to create a movement that would encourage active citizenship among South Africans. We wanted it to be provocative and get people to put themselves in the boots of someone with real power, the power to change things for the better. Who could be more powerful than the President?  Based as it was on the web, were told it was premature and would need to wait until South Africans were more familiar with the web and making their opinions public.

The DA's 6 Million Real Jobs march

Today was the DA's 6 Million Real Jobs march, which has stirred up a lot of controversy in the media and the ANC who regarded it as provocative. The DA went ahead even in the face of a court application by the ANC for a protection order, which was even more of a publicity stunt than they claimed the march itself was - the DA were never aiming to cause damage to limb or property, but the ANC made it seem like war had been declared.