Thoughts on Different Societal Issues

A good friend of mine from varsity days was getting married at a beautiful venue about 20 minutes from Stanford in the Overberg. Stanford is a quaint town 23 km out of Hermanus. Since it was going to be an afternoon wedding on the Saturday, we decided to rather drive out of town on the Friday so that we would not be rushed on the Saturday. Come the time to look for accommodation and then something happened which has been gnawing at me for the past days. Although I have been a recipient of treatment which was downright discriminatory, I have always (and still) prefer to deal with each person on an individual basis rather than to work with generalisations or stereotypes. Having decided on the budget and the potential places which I wanted my wife and I to spend the weekend. One Guest House in Hermanus whose name has to do with a ‘place where a certain bird type stays’ did something which appalled me. After I had entered my details online to book a room, with availability having...

Yesterday (15 October) we had the privilege of hosting Alan Knott Craig Jnr at the company where I work. He got to share some good insights regarding business and entrepreneurship. Being an upcoming entrepreneur I was very attentive and took some notes as he went through his presentation. Before going into the details, a brief introduction of Alan follows (for those who might not know him). Alan (38) was born on the 14 th of August 1977. He is married and has 3 children. Both he and his wife are qualified Chartered Accountants, they got married when he was 25. Alan is the Founder of World of Avatar which started in 2010 and bought Mxit in October 2011. He also served as Chief Executive Officer of World of Avatar and Mxit Lifestyle. Prior to this he served as Managing Director of iBurst. He was formerly the Managing Director of Cellfind. He used to run iBurst and left in 2009.  Other companies he has been involved in developing include Neotel, Herotel and a recently started ...

Having grown up (literally) in church the story of the widow’s offering is one which I knew by heart. However a few weeks ago during offering, the scripture was read and my attention was drawn to certain words used in the passage which are easy to overlook. Mark 12:41-44 41  Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put   and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts .  42  But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. In the Oxford Dictionary put is defined as, “ Move to or place in a particular position .”  In the temple there was a specific location where the offerings where meant to be placed- temple treasury. The name itself shows this is a place where treasure was being placed. As Jesus observed the people, what stuck out was the manner in which they were placing the money in the treasury. When many of the rich people ...

John 16:24 “ Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask , and you will receive, that your joy may be full. ” Many times people go through life operating with a victim mentality. Thinking that everyone and everything is against them. Such a worldview makes a person think they are a victim of circumstances and that they do not have any control over what goes on in their life. Something I have come to realise is that often people don’t achieve what they need to, access what they need to, making the progress they need to, accomplish tasks quickly or get to know what they need to etc. just  because of not asking. This failure to ask can be premised on negative self-talk such as ‘No one would be willing to help me’ or ‘I don’t deserve to be helped.’ Apart from this negative self-talk, one other thing which tends to make people not ask is because of pride . Merriam-Webster defines pride as ‘ a feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by oth...