Nelson Mandela & Masculinity

Raymond Suttner, Mail & Guardian

The main biographies of Nelson Mandela do not consider him as a gendered subject. Yet in these times of widespread violence perpetrated by men, we may learn from Mandela's model of masculinity the type of man he represented.

He changed a lot over the years as his conditions altered; he changed as a human being. We are not dealing with a person whose identity as a man can be reduced to one single, enduring quality.

The sting is in Vavi’s choice of words

History of denigrating women by those in power has been repeated by the way the trade unionist referred to a woman as a ‘girl’, says Nomboniso Gasa, Sunday Independent

Johannesburg - Despite attempts by his own opponents to find charges that stuck, ranging from allegations of his wife’s involvement in the pension affairs of Cosatu workers and his alleged involvement in the Cosatu Head Office debacle, Zwelinzima Vavi seemed to take the challenges in his stride.

The Oscar Pistorius case: Time magazine is wrong, Lulu is right

by Christi van der Westhuizen, Thought Leader

Two mainstream media companies have turned the Oscar Pistorius case into an opportunity to ruminate on the perils of post-white rule.

Time magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have both in their recent coverage used Pistorius’s defence to weigh in on the South African “culture of violence”. It is notable that these media companies have their roots in countries forged through violent processes of colonialism at about the time when the colony that became South Africa was being settled, also through violence.

Namibia: Endemic Violence in Postcolonial Nation

by Shaun R. Whittaker, The Nigerian Daily

Frantz Fanon participated actively in the anti-colonial struggles in northern Africa, which is currently undergoing an astonishing phase of social change. It was probably inevitable that Fanon’s magnum opus about colonialism, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, would start off with a discourse about violence.