Author name: sven

Sitting in a Cape Town coffee shop on one of those dull and grey winter’s days one can be forgiven for thinking that you are in some cosmopolitan European city. The coffee is excellent, the service efficient (and more than likely accompanied with a bigger smile than in Europe), the food is of high quality. […]

Most of us have experienced the scene at some point in our lives. You are at a party and there is an individual being loud and obnoxious, possibly including foul language. Maybe it is as a result of arrogance or alcohol, or perhaps a combination of both. In any event the party host is forced

There were two things the Apartheid government excelled at. One was the suppression of the black majority. The other was the indoctrination of the white population of everything anti-black. How we were led to believe that a black majority government would be a death knell in our lives. We were superior, we had civilisation on

“In the early hours of 18 August 1977 and about an hour away from King Williams Town, Steve Biko and Peter Jones ran into a police roadblock. At the roadblock the police asked Biko and Jones to step out and open the boot. Jones, who was driving, followed their orders but struggled to open the

I wish I could start this article with a line like “twas a dark and stormy night” for dramatic effect, but I can’t, because, truthfully, it was a mild November night, one of those comfortable evenings before the harsh summer heat hits in December. It was in the early hours of the morning. We had

Why does the k-word roll so easily off the tongue of some whites? I’m not talking about thoseunredeemable, unrepentant right wingers here, but about people like the personal trainerworking in a gym in the cosmopolitan city of Cape Town, and whom I see quite comfortably talkingwith his black colleagues and gym members. But when speaking