Thought Leader showcases the best in opinion and insight from around the continent. To support the Mail & Guardian, subscribe here.

One clue to understanding the difference between modernism, postmodernism and poststructuralism lies in the ancient “quarrel” between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Parmenides argued that only being is, ...

I’m absolutely amazed at Mosiuoa Lekota’s recent condemnation of a lack of democracy in the ruling African National Congress, as one of the major reasons for his leading role in the formation of the ...

Near the beginning of the 2014 thought-provoking science fiction film, Transcendence (directed by Wally Pfister2014), one of the main characters, Max Waters (Paul Bettany), walks into and through a ...

It could be argued that the conceptualisation of gender equality is subjective and perhaps even relative because of the varied perspectives from which it is understood. For this reason, the debate ...

The Economic Freedom Fighters have mastered the art of politics as spectacle. With each act of zealous defiance, with each call to strident protest, the EFF conducts a grand performance. Whether ...

Jacob Zuma’s relentless attack on the judiciary had a setback when the constitutional court sentenced him to 15 months for contempt. But will this achieve its purpose?

Within the feminist movement, African feminism occupies a unique position that challenges disempowering constructs issuing from both Western and African paradigms. Contrary to the disinformation about ...

In 2016, ahead of his 85th birthday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post on the topic of euthanasia. Challenging the dominant church view, he wrote that “dying ...

Last week, archaeologists unearthed a seal impression bearing the inscription “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah” near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Hezekiah — Chiskiya HaMelech — is ...

The spectre of South African impotence as Jacob Zuma brazenly defies an order from the highest court in the land, cheered on by an illegal mob gathered in contravention of lockdown rules the ...

In ‘Truth and power’ (1980), Michel Foucault elaborates on different kinds of intellectuals – the ‘universal’ and ‘specific’ intellectual, respectively – in the context of the question regarding the ...