Heterosexuals: Should We Let Them Raise Children?
Veteran journalist Stephen Mulholland was kind enough to publish a helpful piece in the Sunday Times interpreting the mysterious world of the homosexual for outsiders, while noting that same-sex parenting was “neither the norm nor ultimately desirable”. REBECCA DAVIS decided to return the favour in the persona… Read More →
Traditional Courts – Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe’s visit to UCT to address students on Tuesday night comes at a time when he is presiding over a number of pieces of controversial legislation. Little surprise that he was met with a picket organised by students concerned about the Traditional… Read More →
Kony: Still Not Stopped
Remember Invisible Children, the American NGO that brought the world Kony 2012, the most viral video of all time? It’s been awfully quiet since March, when founder Jason Russell was caught in a bizarre, public, naked meltdown. Now he’s back, with a candid Oprah Winfrey interview… Read More →
Going Adult: JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy
Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was released worldwide on Thursday. Potter admirers be warned: this is absolutely unfamiliar ground for Rowling and her fans. Nonetheless, REBECCA DAVIS finds, it’s not all that bad. While reading initial reviews of The… Read More →
Traditional Courts: Whose Bill is it Anyway?
Halfway through public hearings on the Traditional Courts Bill, it’s clear that practically everyone other than the Justice Department and traditional leaders consider it to be vastly flawed. That may not be enough to halt the passage of a bill widely suspected to carry more… Read More →
Ben Okri’s Seductive Oratory
Nigerian author Ben Okri was chosen to deliver University of Cape Town’s (UCT) 13thannual Steve Biko lecture on Wednesday night, and the award-winning poet and novelist gave a compelling address. Some might have hoped for a more hard-hitting presentation at a moment of national upheaval,… Read More →
From The Spear to Umshini Wam, a Trip Less Expected
Ayanda Mabulu’s painting Umshini Wam (Weapon of Mass Destruction) recently went on display at Cape Town’s AVA gallery. Comparisons with Brett Murray’s The Spear are inevitable, since both display President Jacob Zuma’s genitals. But Mabulu’s work does not seem to be raising the same level of ire as its… Read More →
Et tu, ANC Women’s League?
Many of us have become resigned to the ANC Women’s League’s deafening silence on important gender issues. What is harder to stomach is when the League actively comes out in support of sexism – raising the question of whether this once-proud organisation has any integrity… Read More →
The homegrown cartoon series where anything can happen
It has been picked up by Comedy Central Africa Network to be aired weekly. REBECCA DAVIS explores the world of a comic artist who pokes fun at everything from ANC corruption to unfortunate-looking mermaids. A sniper phones his victim and threateningly instructs him to… Read More →
Let them eat cake..
An MTV reality programme earlier this year documenting a party thrown by two young Capetonians made for nauseating viewing in a country riven by yawning economic inequalities. From the dystopian vantage point of 2012, it seems strange to look back and recall that the M… Read More →
50 Shades Of Dull. Whatever.
EL James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey has become the fastest-selling paperback in history, leaving the likes of The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter in its post-coital dust. South African distributors have said they cannot keep pace with the demand. The long-haired bookseller in Exclusive Books looked at me… Read More →
Miss SA
Because the profile of the Miss South Africa pageant has mercifully faded over the past decade, many of us can drift on with our lives, serenely ignoring its existence. But then it gets thrust into our line of vision again, as has been the case… Read More →
Rebecca Davis is one of the funniest women writing in South Africa today. She studied at Rhodes University and Oxford before chucking up the no-doubt lucrative and adrenaline-stirring job as a lexicographer at the Oxford English Dictionary. Rebecca currently writes for the Daily Maverick. The work featured here first appeared on that sausage-fest of a site. 
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