Never make friends with a fiction writer. Your supposed friend may base a character in a book on you. And for them everyone is fair game, even his or her mother or grandmother, not to mention husband, wife or children. And, if he does base a character on you, don’t
Criminality is not good, not for the country and not for you and I personally. We probably all agree on that. But real, deeply felt agreement is not reached until we personally feel the effects of criminal activities on our lives. We have a cottage twenty or thirty metres from
In August it will be two years since Babita Deokaran was gunned down outside her home. She was killed because she was in the process of telling the truth about the theft of public money in the Gauteng Department of Health. As acting Chief Financial Officer in the Department she
We live today, and have always lived in a strange society. Morality, regarding racist discrimination, and morality, regarding the misappropriation of public funds, do not seem to be related. Those who have gained stature as fighters for freedom are sometimes remarkably free with the money of others. When a dozen
Towards the end of winter our ground dries out. It does not dry out a little. It dries until a handful of dirt, pouring through your fingers, has almost no substance. Water poured onto the earth soaks away in moments while the sun beats down without mercy and without pause.
I have been feeling a bit down lately, but then, I fancy, has most of humanity. I have wondered what ails me and found the answer in what is for me an unlikely place. It was explained to me by a writer in the Essential California newsletter. According to him,
A few years ago Hollywood came up with a story they called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, apparently based on a short story by F.Scott Fitzgerald. In the story when Benjamin is born, he is lined, wrinkled and grey, looking like an old man. But as the years pass
Editor, journalist, author and poet Jeremy Gordin was stabbed to death in his home by intruders who traded his life for his car and his television set. Those who knew him thought of him as worth a whole lot more than that. In a recent letter to his adult children
You remember I told you about when I took a shortcut through the cemetery. The night was cold and I was very hungry. Miriam’s warm dinner made the choice for me. I took the shortest route down the path between the graves. Almost immediately I was sorry I had made
Death is a serious business. Shakespeare told us that it is “that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” We knew that though. Some very rich people have bemoaned the knowledge that “you can’t take it with you.” The lyricist Moss Hart even collaborated on a play with that