September 2009
BRT: Right to Choose
As we approach 2010 the impetus to establish a safe reliable and controlled form of public transport is nearing its first implementation phase. This week we will for the first time be able to use the new BRT buses in the city centre.
Look Out! Here comes Everyone. Peter James-Smith
This is James Joyce's quote on the Catholic Church in Finnegans Wake and I often think of it when at 9,30 Mass at Holy Trinity because here is everyone. We, the Church, are everyone and hope to be everyone. We are Christ's Body, we are Peter and Paul and the family running the cafe on the corner. We are Maximilian Kolbe entering the gas chamber in the place of a Jewish family man. We are Thomas Aquinas explaining the faith to his generation and we are the refugee from Zimbabwe or the Congo.
Black Priests, White Church? The Struggle of African Catholic Priests in South Africa (Review)
The Other Side of the Story: The Silent Experience of the Black Clergy in the Catholic Church in South Africa (1898 – 1976), by George Sombe Mukuka, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2008; ISBN 978 18750 53 68 1; paperback, xiv + 214 pp; R100.00.
If the title of my review seems strangely resonant, that is because this is deliberate: the pun on distinguished African theorist and philosopher Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks1 is intended since this new book draws upon many similar themes – race, culture, identity and European hegemony. Mukuka weaves these themes into an informative and theoretically informed history of black Catholic clergy in South Africa.
Judging the Judges
'Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you'. Is it possible that there is an anti-transformation conspiracy out to get the Judge President of the Western Cape, Justice John Hlophe?
The New Arms Race
We are aware of how the previous South African regime used to sell South African manufactured armaments in unstable regions like the Middle East, South America and parts of Africa. This cynical disregard for the security of the citizens of other countries helped to earn our country the status of pariah nation.
Don't Inflate Grades - Inspire Interest!
Happily the suggestion to scale down the requirements for Grade 12 distinctions - reported in local newspapers recently – was a rumour. The reaction to it, however, reflects a deep yet real concern that South African education has already been ‘dumbed down’. The functional illiteracy and innumeracy of many students at universities points to this glaringly. Let me suggest an alternative to grade manipulation based on four key elements of Jesuit education: Prelection, Reflection, Active Learning and Repetition.
