Kanthan pillay biography

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I first met Deon du Plessis at the Sunday Tribune offices in Field Street during the early 1980s where he was deputy editor. He was a giant of a man – I stand close to 6 feet tall, but he towered over me and was almost twice as broad as I am. By the time […]

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My speech at the inauguration of the new Yfm building in Hyde Park on Friday, 19 February 2010 Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen I was in Parliament last week sitting in the National Assembly for the State of the Nation address. Our president arrived, the national anthem began to play, and I stood up and […]

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If you knew that a rose would scream, would you still pluck it? Child abuse is one of my psychological buttons. I suppose my reaction to someone who is accused of doing any such thing is along the lines of religiously crazed Iranians when told that Salman Rushdie has committed blasphemy. My gut reaction is […]

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National Assembly An expanse of cleavage Crowned by botox Ambassadors Burnooses in the rain How rid

Kanthan was born in 1961 in Durban, South Africa, where he finished primary school. He completed high school in Bangalore, India, returning to South Africa to write his matric in 1979 in order to complete the Afrikaans requirement for university admission. He enrolled at the University of Durban-Westville in 1980 for a B.Sc. but was expelled along with hundreds of others during the 1980 boycotts.

He began work as a freelance writer for Post Natal and soon became a regular on the paper, covering sport, politics, and entertainment. A second attempt to enter university in 1983 was cut short by a car accident, and he returned to Natal Newspapers as Political Reporter on Post, while holding down a regular Saturday shift on the Sunday Tribune as branch correspondent (supplying the then newly created Sunday Star), and as copy taster, rewrite sub, and working the news desk. During this time, he also contributed regularly to SASPU National and SASPU Focus, Work in Progress,Ukusa, and was one of several anonymous columnists who wrote for the conservative Indian weekly The Graph

“Having done several thousand interviews in all media, I’m now completely fed up with talking (even about myself). Everything anyone needs to know will be found in my own writings … ”

February 8 1999
It’s a sweltering day in what is definitely one of the most beautiful places in the known universe. Three-wheeled taxis — “auto-rickshaws” — weave in and out of traffic at a blistering pace. My companion, Earl Joseph — a magazine journalist based in Gauteng — shuts his eyes and clutches his seat tightly as a 20-ton behemoth careens directly towards us. I laugh as our driver flings us out of the path of the oncoming truck back onto the “legal” side of the road.

Twenty minutes later, we enter a foyer wrapped in a moonscape and from there up the stairs into his secretary’s office. The walls here are lined top to bottom with framed certificates of awards, degrees, honours, fellowships — far too many to count or note before his secretary ushers us in.

The man who no longer gives interviews lo

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