Temba Bavuma: A Rock In A Hard Place

Earlier this year I noticed a strange cricketing trend: over the last decade, the Test teams most likely to be shot out for under 100 were not underachievers like the West Indies or relative minnows Bangladesh. Instead, the most implosion-prone batting lineups on the planet were South African and Australian. I examined this peculiar statistical

South African cricket: build or become croquet

Twenty years ago, everything was different. Twenty years ago, everything was the same. In the summer of 1995, South Africa was a country consciously, self-consciously, trying to build something better. These days it’s become fashionable to dismiss that period as a naïve fantasy – the worst thing a white liberal can be accused of these

Don’t quota me on that

The bombshell landed with more of a thud than a bang. The country had other things to worry about. Trevor Noah had just become the most influential South African in pop culture. Eskom had just fired the guy who replaced the guy who replaced the guy who dropped the bolt into the machine that wasn’t

Blocked by Mbaks

This week I got blocked on Twitter by South Africa’s sports minister, Fikile Mbalula. That doesn’t make me special. Mbalula aka Fiks aka Mbaks aka Razzmatazz aka Beyoncé Please Call Me blocks people faster than a jammer having a “glitch” in the media gallery at Parliament. And to be honest, he’s actually been pretty restrained with