News & Events, July '05

Takes

"We will of course keep up with the trends while we're at it: gentrify the inner cities under the guise of mixed income housing to impress the 2010 tourists - there shall be no povos on our pavements; ... Trumpet Tokyo's screen debut as a boost for black economic empowerment and reality TV at its best; give Douglas Gibson more prime airtime and whinging parliamentary privilege than any other disaffected white politician, but please shut those ultraleftist renegades up." - Andrea Messon on Gag On This.

"We were editing a scene where John (in frame) was trying to convince a very irritated white South African farmer that his Ju/hoan farm manager be let go so he could return to his own community and start a farming program. Just look at that, he said, look at that scene -- two white men with huge bellies, me and that Boer farmer who looks almost like me, in the middle of a sandstorm in Africa trying to decide the fate of this thin Ju/hoan guy." - Sandeep Ray on Not a skin flick about exotic African women. A Tribute to John Marshall.

"In 2009 the retired Athlone Power Station was turned over to a secret society of artists and urban designers with a mandate to create a wellspring of innovation on the site. By 2011, every weekend, public holiday and school holiday, the place was buzzing with thousands of horny adolescents getting their grove on through dance, painting, climbing, running, music, the word, chilling, riding, contemplating, and especially, laughing at themselves* A few years after that Lentegeur Hospital in Mitchell's Plain was reporting under-enrolment and 2000 cops had to be on early retirement* go figure*" - Edgar Pieterse on Re-dreaming Kaapstad.

"Universities were dubbed white elephants. We did not need thinkers, asserted our erstwhile benefactors. We only needed store keepers and bank tellers and computer operators and marketing managers, who could be trained in vocational schools. Universities are not cost-effective, decreed the Word Bank. Education, knowledge, must be sold and bought on the market. The idea of providing "free" education, which really meant using citizens' money to educate their children rather than buy guns to suppress them, was Nyerere's bad joke." - Issa Shivji on Whither University?