Category: Good Hope
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Why the Gulag Archipelago is more relevant than ever
By Rob Neufeld The Gulag Archipelago is not a book. It is an earthquake in printed form, a slow-motion detonation that went off in 1973 and has never quite stopped shaking the foundations of respectable opinion. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, freshly expelled from the Soviet Union like a bad conscience the regime could no longer stomach, sat…
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How a 2012 novel become Netflix’s most-watched African original
From the imagination of award-winning Zimbabwean author Sukoluhle Nyathi comes The Polygamist, a powerful story of love, ambition, family, and the choices that shape our lives. First published as a novel, the gripping tale has captured global attention after its transformation into Netflix’s biggest African original series. Nyathi’s journey from Bulawayo storyteller to international literary…
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Simone Biles: Redefining greatness through courage and accountability
By Tendani Mulaudzi Simone Biles is an athletic superstar, after continuously redefining gymnastics and what it means to be an athlete. With 11 Olympic medals and a record-breaking 30 World Championship medals, as well as gymnastic skills that bear her name, Biles has also made huge leaps in the sports world by openly prioritising mental…
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Empathy is a skill: Here’s how to learn it
By Toni Botes While we need to satisfy our most basic needs, such as food, shelter, and Wi-Fi, to exist; it’s a pretty miserable existence without emotional connection. In our increasingly productivity-driven world, many of us are beginning to realise that perhaps human connection is more critical than ever. The foundations of such connection can…
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R1-billion blended finance programme to transform real estate – Alessandro Scalco
Listen here In this interview with Chris Steyn, Alessandro Scalco of RMB Sustainable Finance shares the details of a R1 billion Blended Finance Programme to formalise and scale South Africa’s burgeoning affordable rental market. Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) has partnered with INDLU, a property financial technology company that empowers landowners to build, manage, and earn…
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The Fermi Paradox: If aliens exist, where is everybody?
R L Drake explores the Fermi Paradox: why, given the Milky Way’s billions of potentially habitable planets and the Drake Equation’s estimate of 12,500 possible civilisations, we’ve detected no signs of extraterrestrial life. The piece surveys leading theories — from cosmic loneliness to self-destructive “great filters” — before concluding true isolation remains scientifically unlikely. By…
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Lance Dickson: Turning outrage into consequence: the AI cluster built for South Africa’s next boycott
Listen here Lance Dickson kept having the same conversation. A failing council. A price hike nobody could explain. Everyone complained. Nothing changed. So he built Ryze instead, a self-funded civic action platform designed to convert that outrage into organised economic consequence. In his latest interview with Irakli, the founder unpacks the six-agent AI cluster running…
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Echoes through time: How technology is preserving art’s legacy
By Ivan Damon Have you ever wondered why some artists’ legacies endure – their works, a signature, a name, resonates across generations and timelines – while others fade into obscurity? While artistic merit undeniably plays a role, the answer may lie increasingly in the evolving landscape of art preservation and the innovative means of access,…
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Pele Collins: From SpaceX to Y-Combinator: Unlocking the giant origami structures of orbit
Listen here Pele Collins went from leading the SpaceX parachute engineering team that brought American astronauts safely home to co-founding a Y Combinator-backed deep tech startup, Beyond Reach Labs. In his latest interview with Irakli, the proudly South African engineer reveals how his team is tackling the ultimate pick-and-shovel play for the next era of…
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What fruit flies can teach us about the human brain
By Adrian Ephraim Dopamine. It’s the brain’s in-house drug of choice; a neurotransmitter that deals in feelings of pleasure and reward, sending messages that translate into warm and fuzzy emotions. For millennials, it’s that feeling they get when they discover a new notification or a mention on Instagram. That feeling derived from instant gratification, or…
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The conspiracy theories that turned out to be true
By C.B. Stephenson What is the appropriate thing to say to a conspiracy theorist? Sorry I ever doubted you? You ever feel like the tinfoil-hat crowd is just the early-adopter programme for tomorrow’s history books? Turns out the difference between “crazy conspiracy theorist” and “prescient whistle-blower” is usually about fifteen years and a declassification stamp.…
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A world-first: the bond that pays out when nature wins
Listen here In this BizNews interview, Irakli Rekhviashvili sits down with the three people behind FirstRand’s R2.5 billion Cape Water Performance-Based Bond, the first time a commercial bank anywhere in the world has tied a bond’s payout to nature. The Nature Conservancy’s Louise Stafford traces it to 2018, when Cape Town’s dams were weeks from…
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Part 2: Suburbia’s broken promise – Life in the shadow of the American dream
A.M. Homes peels back the polished façade of the American suburb to reveal a world shaped by isolation, performance, and quiet unease. From identical houses to inherited beliefs, her fiction explores how the promise of the American Dream concealed deeper psychological and social fractures. As private lives collide with political upheaval, Homes asks unsettling questions…
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Part 1: How homes became the fault line in America’s wealth gap
By Eugene Yiga The architecture of exclusion: How housing created America’s permanent underclass As America approaches its 250th anniversary in July 2026, a stubborn contradiction sits at the centre of its national story. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.…
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While Pretoria drafts Expropriation Bills, Rupert just hands out title deeds
Johann Rupert’s Reinet Foundation and Remgro have recapitalised Khaya Lam, the Free Market Foundation’s title deed project, pushing the total number of transfers past 24,000 since 2018. Municipal tenants — many holding apartheid-era occupancy rights with no mortgage value — become full title-holders through patient conveyancing work, turning what Hernando de Soto called “dead capital”…
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The stream hits the wall: the uncertain future of great TV
By Carlos Amato With the streaming giants suddenly struggling to justify the cost of creative ambition, the golden age of the small screen might be behind us. But all is not lost. In 2016, I shared a workspace with a team of gifted TV screenwriters. I would eavesdrop hungrily on the 3-hour-long weekly script meetings…
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The hemline index, lipstick effect and the beauty industry’s ties to the economy
By Swazi Mabuza Economics is one of the most metaphor-filled “sciences” we have. It might be economists’ hope to convert us all into experts, or it might be them admitting the subject can get a little bit confusing and getting ahead of it by always having an easy-to-digest analogy at the ready to explain different…
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Old School SA’s Stellenbosch brothers riding Bafana Bafana fever sweeping the country
Listen here Stef and Daneel Steinmann couldn’t buy the vintage Springbok jerseys they kept seeing around Stellenbosch in 2019, a Rugby World Cup year when green and gold were everywhere, so after roughly 100 emails they found a supplier and started their own brand, Old School SA. Six years on, Old School holds official partnerships…
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Jemmy Button and the lost Yaghan: A tragic encounter in Tierra del Fuego
By Peter Dearlove Four young people were taken from their tribe in the remote land of Tierra del Fuego as ransom for a stolen boat in 1830, yet they were treated like celebrities and introduced to the British King and Queen in London. When they were taken home it seemed they had everything they needed…
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The loudest room in South African finance: JSE floor traders reunite 30 years after the screen took over
Listen here In June 1996, the JSE’s open-outcry trading floor fell silent forever. Thirty years on, Irakli speaks to Bernie Montgomery — clerk-turned-broker — who recalls the chaos, camaraderie, and colourful lunches that defined an era before the screen took over.