The Weekend Witness (South Africa)
From dogs to doves: Why being human is still best
“I wish I wasn’t human,” my friend said the other day, stirring her coffee while staring at a doves’ mating ritual. Now, that’s not the kind of statement you just nod at and move on from. It’s a sentence that opens doors. Big ones. “Alright then,” I...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
A moment by the sea: A tragedy revisited
Belle Mare, like most Mauritius beaches, is gorgeous. Little waves lap up on white sand while bigger ones crash against the coral reef that encircles the island; coconut palms here on there on the shoreline and forest of casuarina trees making for a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Nefarious gateway drug or a sliver of happiness?
As with most good stories, even this one ostensibly about birds, we start with a dog. Not just any dog. My best friend, Ripley. Yes, I know I should probably have a human best friend but, alas, I don’t. I have a few good friends, but none I’d describe...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Stuck together
If red is a warning sign, then the fluorescent glow of brake lights signalling traffic is interpreted by my brain as danger. Instead of proceeding with caution, my fight or flight response – which, in any other situation would trigger fight – when met...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
You’re never too old
The dream looks different when it arrives. My thoughts simmered into this conclusion a few months ago as I stared out the window of, incidentally, the same coffee shop I am writing this column from. The combination of coffee and absent-minded people...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Off to the races or to watch the World Cup
It was fitting that two friends, both resident in Mauritius, whom I accompanied to a day at the races at Champs de Mars, in Port Louis recently, had different mother tongues: English and French. Centuries ago, the Brits and the French had been at one...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Could the tables turn?
It was sometime in the 1980s. My wanderlust for more Africa was limited on a “green mamba” apartheid-era South African passport. Malawi, however, welcomed South African tourists. I was in the far north of that little country beside a long, thin deep...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Gatekeeping memory
Ayoung South African wakes up in the morning and reaches for their phone before their feet touch the floor. Within minutes, they have watched a video from an American influencer, laughed at a meme created in Nigeria, listened to a podcast produced in...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Trains and names
South Africa and Mauritius, two of Africa’s most sophisticated economies, share one thing when it comes to railways. Both networks have suffered: ours thanks to theft, neglect, corruption and mismanagement while Mauritius completely lost its network...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Playing by the book
Gran used to say there’s nothing like getting a good feeling of a place and time like reading a well-researched novel. Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre certainly cracked that after his stay on Mauritius — then known as Ile de France — from 1768...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
One nation, one emblem
Another year. Another cricket World Cup. Another loss. Another semi-final loss. Another inexplicable loss from a team who looked like champions. Like every Proteas team since that terrible day in 1999. Could it be that the trauma of that Edgebaston...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Sundowns ready to protect narrow lead in Morocco >>>>>>>>>
All your football European partnership news in with
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Feeling at home in Mauritius
Ataxi driver from the airport is always one’s first introduction to a new country. Three years ago, on arrival in Mauritius, my taxi driver told me food — especially bread – had become expensive because of the Ukraine War. This time around, on my...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Gogo power on the bus
“Twenty minute stop,” the takeno-nonsense coach driver announced at the Bergview One Stop on the N3 outside Harrismith. Earlier, at the first stop after leaving Pietermaritzburg’s busy Burger Street terminus, passengers hoped to stretch their...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
The 4am unnatural alarm clock
If you don’t laugh at a 4am push-started car with a hole in the exhaust, you might just push yourself into madness. My mother asked me one morning how I cope when my neighbour‘s son owns the loudest broken car known to humanity. And this after staying...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Number one
I have experienced a difference between bus trips and train trips across the Free State. On board the former, the co-drivers provide the entertainment and on board the latter it’s the passengers. Maybe acknowledge a gap of about a decade between the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Sitting in the overwhelm
Aperpetual state of overwhelm. That’s what we all appear to be in, based on many recent conversations I’ve had with different people. This wasn’t the column I intended to write this week. I was plotting a completely different course until a colleague...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
To good to be true
Let me tell you a remarkable story about seven dogs that were stolen from their village, loaded onto a truck and destined to become dog meat. Except, they managed to escape the truck en route to their fateful destination and instead were spotted by a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Let them make art, not war
If I said there was a drug that reduced stress, pain, and depression, improved the function of bodily organs, built new neural pathways, enhanced resilience, was preventative against dementia and was available free of charge to absolutely everyone...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Bird patrol keeps the cat away
Iused to think that Indian mynas were the bullies of the bird world. Until one appointed himself as a security guard in my garden. Not to deter burglars and not for pest control. It apparently hates cats. I do not own a cat, but since I moved into...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Books, Baobabs and FMD
Baobabs: those grand castles in the form of trees that, as indigenous flora, dot landscapes of Africa Australia and Madagascar, see lots of life happening on them, around them and under them. There’s the popular legend that it’s an upside down tree,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Monkey business
It always pays to be forward thinking and not leave things to the last minute. Like assuming I only needed to put the finishing touches on the cage protecting my five mealie plants from monkeys when the ears came close to becoming ripe. Not when they...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
A little help from my ‘friend’
“I get by with a little help from my friends.” This line from the Beatles’ song has been playing in my head lately. It may have something to do with euphemistic term I’ve adopted for AI. “Let me ask my friend,” I’ll say, which is code for ChatGPT. I...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Embracing my left hand
Growing up left-handed felt entirely natural to me, yet it was met with confusion and harsh discipline. In Substandard A (now Grade 1), my instinct to use my left hand would lead to abrupt reprimands, with a ruler striking my head and no reasonable...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
I-CONNECT PAGE IS BACK! fights back
Send us your pictures with caption, including full names to [email protected]
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Are you for real?
“Finally, something that’s real.” I am reminded of these words uttered by a young boy in an antique store, almost daily, when I scroll through social media saturated with AI-generated images and videos, or worse, disinformation. What is real and what...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
A 2016 time warp
It’s the year 2026. Or is it 2016? It’s hard to tell these days. On social media at least, where lately every second post seems to carry an ode to 2016. Finally, having made it to the tail end of the 12 months of January, it’s hard enough as it is to...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
The shoes my mother sent me
In the tapestry of childhood, there are moments that refuse to fade. They linger quietly, resurfacing years later with clarity, emotion, and meaning we could never have grasped at the time. This is one such moment, a story about love, simplicity,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
I-CONNECT PAGE IS BACK!
Send us your pictures with caption, including full names to
Read Full Story (Page 1)
A celebration that has stood the test of time
Here we go again, that magical, familiar time of the year when families and communities slow down, gather and celebrate Christmas. As I reflect on my youthful experiences and contrast them with today’s world of modernity, digitalisation and changing...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Christmas spirit
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”, I had to stop myself from singing aloud as I walked through the newsroom one frenetic Thursday. It was, in fact, the day before Black Friday, one of the craziest weeks in a newsroom that produces six...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Let’s fix the system, not just the pass mark
South Africa is once again debating the 30% matric pass mark after Parliament rejected Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane’s motion to scrap it. The public reaction was immediate and fierce, with many arguing that raising the bar would...
Read Full Story (Page 2)