One crocodile, one bullet
Dear CapeNature,
During the December holidays you gave permission to a farmer to shoot a crocodile. Well done. If there is anything this country needs, it's fewer crocodiles. Any animal with that m...
Time to keelhaul the buccaneers
It's hard enough to sell books without Internet pirates filching your stuff.
I discovered this was happening when I came across "Jack" asking his band of brigands where he could get a copy of my la...
Pulp non-fiction – A murder story
In the perilous world of publishing, there is something called 'sales or return'. It works like this. Bookshops will order so many copies of a new title. If those get sold, they might order more.
U...
Woolworths gets fresh meat
News that the CEO of Woolworths has resigned reminded me of this column I wrote a couple of months ago.
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Poor Ian Moir. Who? That's what I thought, too. Apparently he...
You can’t burn a wet dugong
Dear Sasol,
Congratulations on your decision to go ahead and drill test wells on the outskirts of the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park. I have seen photographs of the area and, quite frankly, it ...
A Survival Guide to New Year’s Eve
I have felt uncomfortable about making a big thing out of December 31 ever since discovering that our calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Catholics have done some truly appalling...
The hive mind is braindead
Google thought it might be a fun idea to let the world know the top ten things people in different countries have searched for over the past year. Well, it wasn't. It was a terrible idea. It might be ...
Mayhem and merriment at the mall
All that is preventing hostilities from breaking out in shopping mall parking lots across the country are the Congolese and Rwandan car guards. They have seen some terrible things, and I'm not even ta...
A letter to the ‘General’
Dear Harry Knoesen,
I know you can't see me, but I have just saluted you in proper military fashion. Because I don't have a beret, boshoed or staaldak, I have a tea cosy on my head. Not ideal, I kn...
Time to Khuluma
Kulula's in-flight magazine, Khuluma, is a pretty good read these days under the editorship of Keith Bain. And I'm not just saying that because they punt my new book, Durban Poison, in their latest ed...
Rage against the naaiing of the lighties
After hearing about the Matric Rage going down this weekend, I knew right away I had to be part of it.
When I finished school, we didn’t have such a thing. On the last day of school, our teachers g...
A survival guide to Black Friday
It's that time of year when we all turn into gibbering idiots and experts take it upon themselves to advise us on the blindingly obvious. In the event of a thunderstorm, avoid standing in an open fiel...