While the outrage at racist speech is appropriate and justified, we shouldn’t forgot that legal censure is only one option for dealing with hateful speech – and that it might not be our best option.

The Reputation Institute 2012 survey shows South Africans are losing confidence in the leadership in the private sector. Great. Now we can start to have the kind of robust debate this country and the world so badly needs about the true purpose of business. And hopefully this will amount to something important and meaningful.

It is Friday night at one of my aunts. We are overeating as Jews do on Friday night. I am settling in to being bored for at least the next hour. The conversation drifts around the table for a few minutes until one of my uncles brings his particular brand of wit and insight to the proceedings.

Last Friday was World Fair Trade Day and this week is, locally, Fairtrade Coffee Week. Sure, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, but is it more about superficially soothing one’s conscience or genuinely supporting fair trade? How do consumers know fair trade is really all that fair? IVO VEGTER does some digging – and decides fair trade coffee just isn’t his cup of tea. 

Fear of being branded as “racists” is our real fear. What an insult to black people of South Africa that they should be held to lower standards and encouraged to perform below par because we are too afraid to confront them and demand a higher standard of performance.

People are outraged by a racist comment by a model, but they don’t seem to care whether a very dangerous cop is given free rein – or whether he is suddenly given a sideways promotion. They don’t seem to understand that this is not something abstract. It is something that, ultimately, impacts directly on their own lives.

In India, there is a model for healthcare that goes against all economic logic. People pay what they can to have their sight restored. If they can’t pay, they still get the gift of sight. No bank was prepared to back Dr Govindappa Venkattaswamy, yet today the results of his service are felt in 30 countries across the globe.

Extraordinary moments in life tend to catch you off guard. But when you arrive at the centre of the Catholic faith, St Peter’s Square, with a mother in a wheelchair, a neurosis and an illegal substance – er, foodstuff – you could miss them altogether.

Look, the medium has its uses. It’s often a journalist’s best friend when it gets to breaking news. But it can also be her greatest enemy when it gets to making it. By REBECCA DAVIS.

It’s sometimes hard not to despair about this country. I found myself in some despair, comparing us to others, until I remembered a few things.

The proposed Constitutional amendment removing sexual orientation from protection against discrimination, alongside the Traditional Courts Bill, are grounds for deep concern. What’s next – public flogging, the stocks and an Iron Maiden once a month?

Before giving up Twitter as a noisy place full of annoying real people with opinions and stuff, Zwelinzima Vavi had a few things to say about casual labour. Curiously for a left-wing unionist, he is a darling of the liberal middle-class, but he is still wrong.

In a strange way, announcing something this personal in a public forum is easier than doing so with friends or family. It’s probably because this website has been a beacon of liberal thinking and debate, something which hasn’t always been true when discussing a topic as sensitive as this with one’s parents. This is my coming-out story.

Now that the foul-mouthed Jessica Leandra Dos Santos has suffered the opprobrium and fury of a nation, not to mention the loss of sponsorship deals, where to next? We’re supposed to be building a non-racial country, not just shouting down those who offend the sensibilities of our Constitution.

There has been much talk about President Jacob Zuma’s latest marriage. Some approve, some don’t. But we never really seem to hear from those who are directly affected by this practice: the women.

Against the backdrop of the Jessica Leandra “K-tweet” backlash, good sense and reason often fall prey to the righteous puff-breasted indignation of the Church of the Sacred Sensitivities. Seems this happens a lot and almost everywhere, as TROY PARFITT found out trying to sell a book about China in a Canadian town market.

Most of us stay, many of us leave. Some even get so homesick that they come back. Those who stay either get more depressed about failing services or realise they have to join the body politic to improve things. Those who leave face their own demons. Let's look at ways of coping. 

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, actually. It tells us – and the rest of the world – who we are and where we come from. Places are usually named after their first people and then subsequent conquerors. Place names therefore get a lot of people in various passions. I have a suggestion that should – at the very least – offend no one.

As South Africa reaches the 18-year mark as a democracy, many questions are surfacing. Questions like: What is freedom? Are we experiencing it and is there cause for celebration? Perhaps the answers lie in the examination of our relationships rather than the systems and structures of governance.

The problem with so-called “externalities” – most commonly applied to pollution – is an old one. It is no closer to being solved, but keeps getting raised as a fall-back justification for ever-more bureaucratic regulation and government intervention.

Homo sapiens sapiens – that’s us – must be the most conflicted omnivores on Earth. We oppose suffering, often on the basis of don’t-do-unto-others, so we kill kindly to get meat. Yet we don’t think twice about killing off great swathes of living creatures called plants. We don’t even know for sure whether, aside from being a poor chess player, a cabbage can feel pain at all. But it is good to discuss the morality of meat-eating… what harm can it do?

Who do we vote for? Left brainers or right brainers? How do we vote for them? With our left lobe or the other one? Or is it all emotion and no brains at all? Johann Redelinghuys guides us through the minefield.

Our democracy is on the verge of adulthood. We’re still teenagers, but we’re also fully grown. It is now our choice to become responsible citizens.

The national and international outrage following the viral distribution of a cellphone video made during the alleged rape of a 17-year-old, possibly mentally handicapped girl in Soweto by seven boys and men raises some serious questions about patriarchy in our communities.

More than 10,000 years on humanity seems hardwired into the paradigm of hunter-gatherer. Maybe that’s because we’ve spent so little time in complex social structures that we find ourselves hunting for ideas while gathering experience. But society races ahead in search of new complexities and we’re playing catch-up all the time.

The pronoun “we” in the headline is usually understood to mean “the government”. But the government is failing. Start thinking how we, the people, can rescue South Africa’s children from their government. By IVO VEGTER.

Having previously lived in Amsterdam and Shanghai, I always sought out the “Jewish experience”’ in my temporary hometowns. Having moved to Cape Town in 2009, I wanted to find out more about the local Jewish community and what Jewish life looks like in the Mother City, considering that so many young Jewish people have left the country in the past few decades.

The nation was outraged by a video that went viral on the social media. It was the filming of a 17-year-old girl being violated by a bunch of boys. But this kind of abuse has been going on for years, and it’s not only confined to men being the perpetrators.  
   

The ANC faces all sorts of criticism, all the time. Some of it is rabid. So why this special attention to a comparatively mild critique buried inside a company report? Perhaps because the ANC isn’t that interested in Khoza. Once again, this is about the intricacies of intra-party politics, and the magician’s sleight of hand. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

We all want to retire at 65 and go live beside the seaside. Right? Maybe. But too many of us are too healthy and living too long to make it sustainable. And anyway, a lot of people are proving that you can work well into your 70s and 80s, and thereby create work for others.

Is there a difference between civil and political rights and socio-economic ones? Do the former only impose negative and the latter only positive obligations? Do socio-economic rights amount to legislated slavery, as Ivo Vegter averred? I don't think so.

Rape is the most grotesque form of violence men visit upon women. But in South Africa, where rape is endemic, you’d be hard-pressed to find a man who knows a rapist, let alone find one who’ll admit to seeing himself in the thoughts, words and actions of a rapist.