Author: Gugu Lourie
On what kind of road is Zim, and are we following in her footsteps? Or are we different, more complex, resilient, less easily taken, forwards evolving where Zim by now has retreated 500 years into past medievalism and still accelerating? By Cees Bruggemans The Zim decades started off promising enough, but when people turned against their ruler they got a taste of the whip (North Korean brigades) and democratic voting mechanisms became rigged, meaning elitist kleptomaniacs took control. Life hasn’t been quite the same these three decades for the overwhelming Zim majority, who had a choice of either decamping (mostly to…
Permission has been granted for a #ZumaMustFall march in Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) said on Tuesday. By Genevieve Quintal, NewsAgency “Final arrangements will be done tomorrow [Wednesday] morning when organisers meet with representatives of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department events unit to finalise the route and exact time [of the march],” Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said. The march would start in Braamfontein and end in Newtown Park. Minnaar said the meeting between the JMPD and the organisers was expected to take place at 07:00. President Jacob Zuma is facing a backlash after he announced last week that he…
Telkom and The Walt Disney Company Africa have partnered to celebrate the release of the highly anticipated film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (in cinemas nationwide from 16 Dec) with South African consumers. From January you will start to see the advertising partnership as well as the detailed Star Wars: The Force Awakens packages exclusive to Telkom. One of the key aspects to this partnership is while the film will be available for viewing internationally from the 18th December, South Africans will be seeing it from the 16th December – one of the first countries in the world to see…
As Tshwane residents enjoy their traditional holiday at the coast, there’s a Christmas treat in store for visitors and those who remain behind. By Duncan Alfreds, NewsAgency Project Isizwe, charged with implementing the City of Tshwane’s Wi-Fi build programme, announced that from December 24 to 26, the metro will offer free uncapped internet access. “The ‘Christmas gift’ is possible due to many Tshwane residents leaving the city for holidays, reducing network load and creating an opportunity to provide users with more bandwidth at no extra cost to the city,” Alan Knott-Craig jnr of Project Isizwe told Fin24. The non-governmental organisation has…
South Africa is a water scarce country. With average annual rainfall of 450mm – compared to a global average of 870mm – the country is ranked the 30th driest in the world. One would assume that we would be more cautious when it comes to water usage and wastage and that conservation would be a priority for everyone. By Kroshlen Moodley, GM: Public Sector and Utilities at SAS Unfortunately, it’s not, and the current drought has brought this into stark focus, sparking crucial conversation about how to secure future supply to meet increasing demand. We can prevent an even bigger crisis.…
There are genuine rewards & recognitions, and then there are hospital passes. What happened to Pravin Gordhan last Sunday was a bit of both when Zuma re-offered him (as a pair of ultimate safe hands capable of damage control) the position of Finance Minister so very recently vacated by his new colleague David van Rooyen, who in turn was offered the position of minister of local government (for which he likewise wasn’t really qualified, continuing his quandary, definitely not of his making). By Cees Bruggemans Having gamely accepted, with ground rules we can only surmise, but probably quite different from what…
The holiday season can be a traumatising time for many people, but spare a thought (or retweet) for those who strive to be a part of the cultural zeitgeist at the expense of all sanity and reason. By Luke Butcher For these individuals, fear can be an incapacitating emotion caused not by spiders (arachnophobia), the colour white (leukophobia), or a fear of the numbers 666 (hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia), but rather a fear of missing out (FoMO). Scholars consider FoMO a pervasive apprehension that one is absent for the rewarding experiences of others, and is characterised by a desire for continual connection with what…
Email phishing attacks are especially popular over the festive season, partly because there’s an increase in email marketing and special offers linked to the holidays. By Rika Butler and Martin Butler During the fourth quarter of 2014, for instance, the number of unique phishing attacks globally went up by 18% compared with the third quarter that year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. A total of 437 brands were targeted and 46,824 unique phishing websites were reported, the majority of them hosted in the US. The most-targeted industries for phishing attacks are retail/service, financial services and payment services. It seems that during the…
Liquid Sea, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liquid Telecom, has started a project to build a new subsea cable linking Africa to the Middle East with onwards connectivity to Europe. By Gugu Lourie Liquid Sea will run approximately 10,000km from South Africa to the Middle East. It will be connected to Liquid Telecom’s pan-African terrestrial network, enabling a reliable and affordable international connectivity service to landlocked and coastal countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The project is already fully funded and it is estimated that it will take 2 years to complete. Liquid Sea will offer speeds of 20-30Tbps, up…
President Jacob Zuma signed the Criminal Matters Amendment Act, 2015 into law on Monday, the presidency said, a move that spells bad news for cable and scrap metal thieves. By Genevieve Quintal, NewsAgency The act amends the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 and introduces harsher sentences for the destruction of essential infrastructure and more stringent bail conditions and applications for perpetrators. “The amendments provide for changes to the law pertaining to infrastructure-related offences by making stricter provisions for the granting of bail, the sentencing of offenders and creating a new offence to criminalise damage to, tampering with or destruction of essential infrastructure…