Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Angelo Fick

Creator

Angelo Fick

Angelo Fick is the Director of Research at ASRI. He continues to do part-teaching at universities on questions of culture, and still publishes columns at eNCA.com.

Formidable: JM Coetzee is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2003 Nobel prize for literature.
(Micheline Pelletier/Corbis via Getty Images)

JM Coetzee: A fine mind, a formidable intellect

Behind JM Coetzee, the writer lauded for his ‘wonderfully brave, bold mind’ , is John Coetzee, the quiet man

Scuppered: Critical records of our past are being ditched by the very instutions that should be preserving them. The library in Springs, the birthplace Nadine Gordimer, got rid of at least one of her books. (William Campbell/Sygma/Getty Images)

Importance of preserving the archive

If we are to make sense of the present and plan for the future we must understand our past, and so we must preserve our records

All that’s needed to take part in mobile and e-learning is a smartphone and data, right? Yet with the majority of our youth not having access to these indispensable educational tools, South Africa’s young adults face limited prospects in the future. (Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

Skills deficit undermines 4IR promises

Technology is not necessarily the panacea it’s said to be, de-skilling further the under-skilled

Ahmed Essop was born in India in 1931, but came to South Africa as a child.

A tribute to Ahmed Essop, teacher, writer and shining light of South Africa

Many revered Essop as a beloved teacher of English before he clashed with the apartheid authorities and was barred from teaching

As compromised as we may think the present, we have much for which to thank the dead when we look at what does work in this society, writes the author. (John McCann/M&G)

SA today is another country     

1994 set us on the path to freedom, but much must still be fixed and new problems await us

Unregulated housing embodies the worst intersections of poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. Johannesburg’s future demands sustainable urban planning and community participation. Photo: File

We dare not dream of freedom until we can effect equality

April 27 1994 set us on the path to freedom; but much must still be undone – and new problems await us

(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

Media freedom too easily taken for granted

South Africans must fight against those who try to encroach on our hard-won freedoms

To keep children safe from sexual abuse in our churches, we need to listen to them without judgment, believe them when they speak up and respect their voices and feelings. (Oupa Nkosi)

The shame of Room 80: We must act

Violence and abuse, particularly of women, needs to go beyond expecting the state to end it

Giuseppe Rava’s illustration of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 is a reminder of how

Ethnic boxes perpetuate colonialism

The dangerous re-ethnicisation of SA politics must be stopped lest it lead to the same ethnonationalism that caused bloodshed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia

‘Like many politically powerful women

Winnie’s death a chance for us to introspect

Judging her by long-held patriarchal standards only exposes our society’s misogynistic gaze