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Required field Required field24 August 2011,
in Guest Writers
From Gus Silber's Twitter Overfow Blog
When I was small - this was before iPhones, Nintendos, and the Internet - I would sometimes lie on my back in a darkened room, with my eyes shut tight, trying to imagine what the universe might have looked like before the universe began.
It was a self-defeating exercise, one that has flummoxed many a Zen Master and French Existentialist over the years, because the mind is designed to contemplate anything but the nothingness of pre-existence.
When you try to think about nothing, you wind up thinking about the fact that you are trying to think about nothing, and then your head starts to hurt and you get up and stumble into the light in search of meaning and something to eat.
But still, I can picture the void, the blank slate, the heavy, fuzzy canvas of the universe before it erupted into being....Read More397
02 August 2011,
in Guest Writers
Beg pardon, dear reader, slightly slow start, but herewith the Best Of Silber archive gets going, disclosing the secret of how Gus didn’t get a speeding ticket in Tzaneen.
We were just outside Tzaneen, on the R71 to Phalaborwa, a road that serves little purpose other than to cleave the mopani-veld in two and allow you to get to the Kruger National Park as quickly as possible.
Just how quickly, became apparent when a man in a smart brown uniform leaped onto the tarmac up ahead, waving his hand excitedly in the air.
This is a sight that always...
Read More426
28 June 2011,
in Guest Writers
Back to the, er, past . . . This month we've changed our name from The ColdType Reader back to the original, and simpler, title of ColdType. It's the third time we've changed our name: the first incarnation of ColdType was in tabloid printed format; then, after a long hiatus, it became ColdType2, an e-magazine inside ColdType.net. After a couple of issues, we switched to the less-confusing ColdType Reader. Now, with our 57th issue, we're back where we began: ColdType. – Tony Sutton, editor
Read More993
25 June 2011,
in Everything else
People, part of the Grand Plan is to offer you a terrific read. That’s why we’ve been stealing James Greener’s terrific economics. Now we’re also stealing Gus Silber’s terrific everything-but-economics. The hidden aim is that while you visit them you catch up on the unfolding of D2. The unhidden aim is to breed a real magazine here, and a great one at that. You’re seeing the embryo. Watch this space. Meantime: welcome, Gus (see his Twitter Overflow Blog)! Whoo-hoo.(Drums, trumpets, balloons).
Read More1336
20 June 2011,
in D2 - Latest
It’s not about prescriptions, it’s about a low wide pyramid
Mensa does me a big favour, inviting a Round 2 on D2. This is the first time anyone has asked for a follow-up. (Mind, it’s barely a year since the first D2 speech ever).
A corner of my minds sinks. I have to earn. The bulk of my mind rejoices. What a lot of echo.
Douglas Shaw, chairman, does more favour by setting out a whole marathon of points to be addressed. Grazie, Douglas. I take the liberty of condensing your points, with my replies. That’s partly to give your guys an Agenda or a...
Read More772
31 May 2011,
in D2 - Latest
STOP PRESS
(What a funny phrase -- once meant "Hold everything! Important new news!")
The evening with Mensa (see below) was a load of fun. They didn't throw too many big words or IQ riddles at me. They did throw a zillion D2 questions, and kept on throwing them in the bar for 90 minutes after I was officially off duty. Several times Mensans who had picked up on one aspect of what I was saying gave their own replies, which were not necessarily close to the reply I would have given.
That was a tantalising glimpse of what a relief it will be when...Read More1012
27 May 2011,
in D2 Overview
On the way to Sci-Bono, the radio is race, race and race. UN economist Jeffrey Sachs is under fire for raising the thought of a three-child policy in Africa. A lengthy string of African persons come on to express extreme distaste for non-African persons telling Africa what to do.
I sukkel over what to make of this. An outside agency tells you to change a practice that has been unquestioned forever? This practice has given you a richly extended family that makes you as an African feel strong and fortunate compared to cultures by whom in other...Read More1236
20 May 2011,
in D2 - Archive
Funny, writing an after-the-event preface to a story written as a prelude to the event. Feels unnatural, a bit guilty, like (long-ago memory) playing the fairway backwards, from the green to the tee. But there is an object lesson in here, damn sad one though it be. Also, for the writer it's a pleasure to be writing about the real world, in relief from the constant hypothesising of D2, so one may hope it may be relief for the reader, too.
The up side of Olliver Ransome telling me what's wrong with Hibiscus Coast is very up. It is that if Madiba was...
Read More1490
17 May 2011,
in D2 - Latest
This was Episode 2 of my pre-election series for The Star. I'd like to think it brings up stuff that doesn't end because an election happens. What it certainly brings up is a rugby-scrum of evidence to support D2. Most people in this tale – one conspicuous exception – have nil notion of control or even influence over the circumstances of their lives. Look at the growth that awaits when they get issues they understand, leaders they know, a set of bridges in place of what is now a chasm between themselves and the exercise of political power.At a...Read More957
12 May 2011,
in D2 - Latest
Thanks to The Star and its colleagues in Independent Newspapers for making me a journo again, briefly. I'd forgotten what fun it is to get a sore bum bouncing in the back of a bakkie over a dirt road to meet unlikely people and learn something you hadn't thought of. Also, how absolutely uplifting South Africa is beneath the overlay of political bullshit. Nice people, wherever you go. I should know this. I kindof do, but when you spent enough time sitting in suburbia seeing your world through media eyes, you get misled into the media's focus on...
Read More630
28 March 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
The media told Denis Beckett that Libyans hate their tyrant, but Google seems far from sure of that.
In London in 1989 South Africa’s conflict was big TV news. One channel had a pulsating flashpoint logo with the day’s death count. Every night showed flashing flames with a place name and a race scorecard. “Stilfontein - 1 White, 3 Blacks”; “Lusikisiki - 4 Blacks”.
How primitive this was. As adjectives these terms were crass (and inaccurate, but “pink” and “brown” would sound hopelessly undramatic). As nouns they were barbaric, and dumb; even...
Read More1274
05 March 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
Denis gets put off his breakfast by a bit of passing people-clubbing, a la seal-clubbing, and turns his mind to how D2 might impact on this quadrant of human affairs.
Dawn is rising over Wanderers Street and my OWJ lobe is in nostalgia mode. Nostalgia is the birthright of we Old White Joburgers; we’re world captains. Other cities have changed, I do not begrudge, but none like ours. Especially round Wanderers Street.
On Rapallo Corner I get déjà vu. 1960s, half-term dinner on pass-out from boarding house. Artificial grapes over artificial...Read More1400
24 February 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
On the pavement, surrounded by a tangle of pruned rose branches that would defy a tank, our cousin, Di, has nearly finished a day of rose-surgery. They’ve been mega-bushes, climbing our wall. I’ve just got home. I’m awed. I’m saying “Di, can I get you tea, can I get you coffee, can I get you a whiskey, can I get you band-aid...”
While I talk, branches fly out of the mobile hump that is Di under bushes. She keeps on working: “No. No. No. No.”
I know her No's will all be No's, but there is the hostly instinct. Seffricans are good at that. We...
Read More688
24 February 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
Keen is fine. I’m in favour of keen. We can use more keen. Give us keen! When you find keen, you do not lightly stomp on it.But the car-guard was over-keen, he was beyond keen. He was as frenetic as a trainee manager on a team-building junket.
This was the corner of Jeppe and Something; could be Gwigwi Mrwebi Street or Ntemi Piliso Street. These new names are nice in principle – named for actual arts people, who actually connected to this arty quarter – and sensitively balanced vis-à-vis old names. But damn, there’s a time before you get the...
Read More764
24 February 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
Our local Community Police Forum asked me to speak at their AGM, and wanted me to propose a topic. I said I’d like to address why, in this crime-obsessed society, the annual meeting of a police precinct containing some 50 000 adult people would not have more than 0.03% attendance. I got keen on that question, as I thought round it, and I’d like to submit to Moneywebbers a condensed version of the speech:
Riparile, goeie naand, molweni, shalom, namaste, sanibonani, goeie naand, dumelang, salaam aleikom and good evening. When CPFs came in 15 years...
Read More789
22 February 2011,
in Denis's Moneyweb Columns
Why is Joburg’s mayor blamed for a terrible speech that he didn’t make? And what does this say about how we progress to the era of the sound political foundation?
**************************
This article was done for Moneyweb in February. I discover July 15 that half of it (the D2 lecture) evaporated into cyberspace when it got imported here. Beg pardon, of the 270 people who read it and wondered "what?" It did have a point, I think/hope, now reinstated. Denis
A Get-Down Joke Ain't No Joke
The last time that I unpacked my...
Read More992
11 February 2011,
in D2 - Latest
Well, newish.
My daughter Emma tells me that all I do on this site is say the same thing over and again. She’s a healthy presence, Emma, keeps one’s feet upon the ground. I appreciate her perspective. Which doesn’t mean that I share it.
My perspective is that I haven’t yet said it right. The central point is so compelling that once you cross the threshold it speaks for itself. But until you cross the threshold you have a blur of wrong ideas, like everyone scurrying about voting all day, and wild duplications of expenses, and Mtubatuba legalising...
Read More764
06 February 2011,
in D2 - Latest
Republished here on my site by courtesy Moneyweb. This piece marks the overdue resumption of a neglected column on Moneyweb. In its way it represents a step forward in D2-thinking. You may wish to check the comments on Moneyweb, whose readership, as you may guess is about a zillion-fold D2's. (You'll probably fairly easily detect one reason that the column became neglected). - DenisMy friend Shaun forwards "QUOTE OF THE CENTURY". This is the fourth time that "QUOTE OF THE CENTURY" descends upon my Inbox, and the second that it is sent to a single...
Read More1840
06 February 2011,
in Radical Middle Reviews
Fred de Vries reviews Radical Middle in Rapport
Denis Beckett is a cross between a pitbull and an evangelist: ready to fire up, never-say-die, and indefatigably convinced that he is right.Even if he must take on every windmill in the country, he will fling his ideas on mega-democracy far and wide in the hope that someone, somewhere, will pick them up and they will spread like a virus to the point that we eventually acquire a genuinely democratic South Africa, a democracy where government is not just grounded on "one man, one vote" but where...Read More773
03 February 2011,
in Radical Middle Reviews
Duma Ndlovu spent youthful years fighting a revolution, as he says here, while his naïve bosses, including me, thought he was a dedicated truth-seeking journalist. Then he spent many more years as a freelance agitator/ activist in various points of exile, never quite under ANC discipline but never far from their sentiments. Now he is the producer of the enormously well-watched soapie, Muvhango, SA's answer to Days of Our Lives. I wouldn't dream of calling him a fatcat, as he stills clings, more than many, to the egalitarian ideals of his youth,...Read More864
29 November 2010,
in Radical Middle Reviews
Neels Blom, www.newstime.co.za November 29, 2010
Citizens who have attained fishing age will remember the republic’s second referendum, held in 1983, when South Africa’s whites-only voters were asked to say yes or no to the National Party’s tri-cameral parliament, an institution which would entrench the disenfranchisement of the country’s African majority. Denis Beckett, in his new book, Radical Middle: Confessions of an Accidental Revolutionary, reminded me of that decade of heavy state oppression, bombs in street bins, economic sanctions – and...
Read More982
12 November 2010,
in Guest Writers
How the black majority vote has failed to deliver the economic emancipation of Africans. By Vince Musewe
JOHANNESBURG 5 November 2010- Our voting and political systems in Africa are inappropriate and fail to ensure that those with the necessary skills and competencies occupy political office.
I read a very interesting exposé on African history on BBC's website that has led me to confirm that we in Africa are not likely to see an end to racism and really we should not spend too much energy on it but rather focus on how we can create our own new...Read More1087
D2 Exchanges
Here are 15 or so good people giving echoes (thanks!) and me trying for short, real, replies that make D2 clearer
It's the system that turns voters into ethnic herds
I have a friend who still reckons Afrikaners are a lesser race, sent to try the patience of we lordly Anglo-Saxons. In old days he made me livid. I had to oppose his bigotry, lest he spread it. Now I laugh him off as a deadhead; he could as well be punting elves and fairies. The Eng-Afrik racist baggage evaporated, unaided by decree, statute, or intellectual guidance. Which, I submit to Raymond Suttner, is what will happen to the Black-White baggage when D2 prevails.
This, Mike's reply to Laxative, Mike; align the gut with the head, is absolutely delightful. It is also vintage Mike. It is also magnificently wrong. Read Denis' long overdue reply here.
This smart-looking oke is Pedro Victor. I think his smart look has to be deceptive, when you see the hard time he gives me. He makes me explain again what D2 means, and re-explain why to get a truly stable next-phase society you can't do devolution and you can't do bit-by-bit. You have to make a far step, in one go. Then again, look close and you see that the stability of the outcome is copper-bottomed, so making the step will be easy when its import is better known. The place to see more is here. And Pedro, seriously, thankyou, you make me say things better, you're valuable (and as smart as you look).
What a gentleman is this! The debate he enthusiastically participates in is one of those that reduced me to rudeness about Malema debates as a genre. But does he get rude back? Nope, he's above that. He asks a legit question, only slightly tersely.
Phoebe is innocent! All she asked is "where's the debate?" But you'll admit that's a trigger question when the debate consists of long-distance amateur psychoanalysis of a few frail mortals whom our inadequate politics has grossly overpromoted. Check it out here.
Great & inspiring & all but, um, HOW?
Bernard Spong is one (of many) who doubts that D2 can get going, with big bad government ready to flick it away when it surfaces. But Bernard doubts it nicely, and in writing, and gives me a peg to reply. Brother Bernard, thank you! Actually, what you have here is the first wholly unbannable revolution; no possibility of a gun , a knife, a stone being raised. Plus the first that needs no displacing of incumbents ... but hey, Bernard's comment is here, and my reply with it.
Katy Louw buys into "inevitable". Hooray Katy! I'll send you a gold star in the post. I know the rest of you think it's insanely arrogant to talk of "inevitable".Yeah, I concede it's an off word. But ... if any one person can seriously tell me any conceivable direction that political development can take, other than fuller and richer democracy, I'll buy a humble pie. I'll cancel "inevitable". I'll send Katy two bottles of Solms Hiervandaan Shiraz blend. But you can't, hey? Me and Katy know that much. The Katy exchange is here.
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