As the shocking revelations of 2016 showed, Transnet was one of the main victims of State Capture. Transnet is the state-owned enterprise that is responsible for the maintenance of 31 000 km of railroad in South Africa. Needless to say they have largely failed at this task. Their incompetence combined with cable theft and vandalism has led to much of our rail transport falling into a state of total disrepair, becoming essentially unusable. The fall-out from this has been a massive increase in the use of trucks for transporting coal and goods across the country.

Something I often wonder about when it comes to climate action but also just people in general is: why are we so resistant to change? Faced with copious amounts of irrefutable evidence, many people are still unwilling to adjust their lifestyles in environmentally friendly ways. Some even doggedly deny the veracity of the crisis entirely….

I recently read a piece by Steven Pinker – author of Enlightenment Now – in which he describes an enlightened person as someone who has replaced faith, dogma, and folklore as a proper way to find the truth*. The 21st century is supposed to be an enlightened era, so it frustrates me when I read…

I didn’t plan to become a librarian. I wanted to be a writer. On my first day at University, I selected English and History as my majors – between those two you have all the tools you need to write stories. I thought. To fill up my course I chose Library Science. Working at an…

Earth Day was first celebrated on 22 April 1970. I only became aware of Earth Day in 1990 when, by chance, I watched a celebrity-laden American television special creating awareness about the state of Mother Earth, who was played by Bette Midler. It was all a bit, how shall I put it? Silly. At that…