Swart Donkey

The way we see the world is path-dependent. Which means occasionally we have to reassess the way we remember seeing things. I didn’t grow up...

I lived in the UK for 12 years. When I arrived, I admit I was skeptical about the idea of poverty there. The UK is a rich country. There is ...

My understanding of South African history and the clashing introduction of Europeans was very different from the “New World” rushes where ad...

The irony of growing up in Apartheid where a privileged minority received various advantages, is that that is not part of the deep soaked se...

What we do, matters. What has been done, matters. History plays out its consequences. For me, being (randomly) born in South Africa at the t...

A cornerstone of my personal story is having grown up in South Africa during Apartheid. I was born in 1980. Nelson Mandela was released in 1...

South Africa is the most unequal economy in the world. It is also not an outlier. How can those statements both be true? We keep our inequal...

Democratic South Africa turned 27 today.  We experience life as a controlled hallucination. We interpret our experiences and the information...

Whether it is from growing up in Apartheid, or being the youngest of three brothers, I have the common South African trait of a healthy disr...

There is irony in one of the existential questions of being South African. Wherever you earn a living or sleep, there is a should I stay/go/...

Money and words are a form of communication. A way to hear stories. You can reflect on and learn through other people’s stories. Your reflec...

PK and “The Power of One” created a vivid picture of overcoming struggle, and of Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarship, for me. Cecil John Rhode...

I moved to the UK from South Africa in 2008, via Bermuda. My high school Maths teacher used to tell me I always did things the long way (my ...

How do you start? Building Capital so that you can gradually become less dependent on your earning ability, seems like a game reserved for t...

I grew up in the Methodist Church which emphasised, among other things, two key values – avoiding conspicuous consumption, and self-reliance...

I went to school in the same neighbourhood for 15 years. 3 years pre-school and 12 years “big school”. We didn’t all like each other. Ther...

“Do you believe in God?” This question had an easy answer in Westville where I grew up. We had a shared vocabulary. Yes, the people who we...

Financial Security is a team sport. The former Mayor of South-Central Durban, Theresa Mthembu, invited me to her home in 1996. It was the ...

I don’t’ write Blank Cheques. Every decision has trade-offs. Having been born into Apartheid South Africa, I don’t subscribe to the philos...

South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. It is also only as unequal as the world. This is only possible because the primary tool ...