Death, A Self-Portrait. "I smelled her in the car park next to the buildings and on that small patch of grass I gingerly walked across to get to her. But when they opened the door I smelled her more." Prompted by Death: A Self-Portrait (Wellcome Collection), assembled by Richard Harris, a former antique print dealer based in Chicago, US. Continue reading

Death, a self-reflection: "The delicious news of death brought the whole world alive, until the experience of expiration set in and I began to understand that I would never see, I would never hear, I would never touch again. That the afternoons spent in the cabin of a Dazzle Datsun in the Southdale car wash with its whipping nylon threads beating down on the roof were gone. Singing on stage in front of brass fluted organ pipes that silently witnessed a small girl serenading an old man was gone. Taking heaping spoons of condensed milk that had thickened over time from a can from a man who never bought milk because he had no fridge were gone." Continue reading

How Telkom is handing Gupta's The New Age millions in a sponsorship deal you're sponsoring. Continue reading

The 2013 Yale World Fellows Program is now open to journalists across the globe who have distinguished themselves in their profession or geography. Continue reading

The problem with #muslimrage is the way it is being portrayed by the media. Take Newsweek's vulgar caricature of 'Muslim rage' mid September and what it has done to promote a particular stereotype of Muslims in the US. It earned the ailing news weekly a swift kick where it hurts most. Continue reading

Read the story at Daily Maverick : Marikana eyewitness: 'He raised his hands, they shoot him in the head'. Now listen to the audio: Marikana_IV Continue reading

Spot the lies and fallacies the government's POIB propaganda advert. The winner gets a free copy of Vuk'uzenzele. Continue reading

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair." - Bertrand Russell Continue reading

This weekend the Guardian is opening its doors to over 200 speakers and thousands of guests for the Guardian Open Weekend. Continue reading

"Death Metal Angola" is a documentary (in the final stages of production) about the hardest, hardcore music and a dream to stage the first ever national rock festival in Angola. Continue reading

Interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Clay Shirky says 2012 will yield a critical mass of readers will be willing to pay for news online. Also on the show, Denise Warren, general manager for NYTimes.com, who explains the New York Times paywall strategy. Continue reading

Tech billionaire and founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, is making further investments in Africa through his vehicle Here Be Dragons (HBD). Continue reading

No one reads. Everyone talks. Hardly anyone really listens. Imagine if things were different. Continue reading

Zuma's performance agreements with government ministers are a toothless tiger. What's needed to drive performance and service delivery is bite. Variable pay may just be the sharp toothed incentive to get delivery back on track. Continue reading

The World Cup dream has arrived, but don't forget to return to the hard work of fighting corruption and nation building when the world packs up and goes home. Continue reading

As fear and loathing play out in this country, the real question is what can be done to mend SA's racial divide? Continue reading

Never mind Raymond, the real truth is that everyone loves Dave Duarte. Rated as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Media and Advertising people in South Africa by Jeremy Maggs in “The Annual”, Duarte has just been appointed by advertising giant Ogilvy to integrate digital into the heart of the agency. This directive will realise the Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy to ensure that Ogilvy “throbs with the pulse of social media”, as Duarte puts it. What's unique about Duarte is his ability to straddle two worlds. At UCT's Graduate School of Business, he's the director of two executive education... Continue reading

As our political and business role models flounder in the responsibility stakes, the question begs to be asked – how can South Africans be expected to behave accountably and maturely if our leaders behave like toddlers? With their hands caught in the cookie jar, as boards disintegrate around them, or as they cause disruption and dysfunction to state-owned enterprises, these leaders throw their hands up in the air, confess “my bad”, and without pause, carry on. Continue reading

Although self awareness isn’t a safeguard against misery or a guarantee of happiness, Socrates’ guiding value has significant value. As the non traditional Latin inscribed on a plaque above the Oracle’s door in the Matrix film trinity advocates: “temet nosce” ("know yourself"). Growing self knowledge, fostering self insight, and developing self esteem is a worthwhile journey that can lead you to truth. Continue reading

Isn't it high time the South African government understood how to enhance our gross national happiness? South Africa is one of the unhappiest nations on this earth. We're not as miserable as Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia or Angola, but we come in at a lowly 118 out of 143 nations measured in the Happy Planet Index. A survey conducted by the New Economics Foundation, the Happy Planet Index reveals "the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered". The Happy Planet Index is similar to Bhutan's concept of Gross National Happiness, which puts the well-being of people and the planet... Continue reading

Eskom's management mess comes as no surprise, given the state of the operation, regulatory rot and the leadership crisis at other parastatals. Continue reading

Hold the presses folks. A PR agency's client has just launched a new, 'interactive' blog. Continue reading