Ryan Coetzee

Finally watching the Wales game. The unbridled and unrivaled joy of watching a Springbok scrum destroy the opposition.

@CathyReisenwitz Was this a joke? Very definitely plural.

Imagine running a political magazine social media account and not knowing that politics is singular. This is the state of the right-wing intelligentsia.

Is one’s view of The Odyssey now a statement of political identity? Could anything be more tedious?

@JacquesMaree73 😂

@RyanCoetzee As long as you don't deny the Lift experience of others.

Just took a flight and was invited to “enjoy the lived experience.” When did this sort of language enter marketing jargon, I wondered grumpily? Took me an hour to realise she’d said, “Enjoy the Lift experience.” I was flying Lift.

It is! Why not do it then?

@Danie_Pretorius 😂

@RyanCoetzee Be grateful you didn't enjoy the livid experience.

@richardcalland 😂 Ok that was funny.

@RyanCoetzee Thank you for giving me a choice. I’m opting for one brick.

Thick as two bricks.

@richardcalland To be more specific: if you read her tweet and thought I am “shilling” (defamatory, actually) for “Tony Leon’s client, Starlink” then you are either as thick as at least one brick or in bad faith. You can decide which.

@richardcalland It is!

Why then has the process to concession ports stalled? The promise (during the budget drama in 2025) was that the tender documents would be out before the end of last year. Why aren’t they?

Where even to begin…

Extraordinary. Must be very satisfying for the A team lads. Perhaps a rethink from the selectors needed.

I assume it’s obvious that while the Amazon deal for low-orbit satellite internet is wonderful news, the ownership requirement ICASA insists on (and which contradicts BEE legislation itself) is an obstacle to other investments in the space, and that’s why it needs to be changed. We need lots of players to allow the market to operate efficiently and bring down prices for consumers while improving service. That’s the idea.

This piece reads like a journalist trying to justify being part of a moral panic. It boils down to an acknowledgement that the only difference between lobbying in SA and lobbying in Western democracies is that in those countries there is some transparency legislation/regulation. And indeed there should be here too. But it is not Resolve’s job to impose on itself requirements that legislators have not seen fit to make, unless you think the right thing to do is to start taxing yourselves, by way of analogy. There is also a slightly amusing misunderstanding of how things work in those Western countries, which are *awash* in lobbying. Let me explain how it works in the UK: every agency hires people who have been in government or politics from every party of any significance precisely because they know people on the inside. Some even hire civil servants who have worked in a specific area of public policy when big reforms in that area are being contemplated. Obviously. The oddest bit is the insistence of outsiders that Tony Leon has some special hold over people inside the DA. Part of me just wants to say, listen, you just have no idea how things work internally. But they would just say that I would say that. So look at the evidence instead: despite all this “weight” we hear about, in the two years since the formation of the GNU Resolve has managed to get just one client to meet with just one Minister - John Steenhuisen. An inconvenient fact, repeatedly glossed over. So look, let’s have some legislation/regulation to provide greater transparency. But the truth here is not merely that there has been no legal breach; there has been no ethical breach either. They set up a meeting with John Steenhuisen, and made some calls to Solly Malatsi. That’s it. Now on the subject of ethics I suppose we could start a discussion about the state of South African journalism and what the journos say about it and about each other, but I am sure they won’t appreciate me providing anonymous quotes about their views on one another.

@justicecanham True for a few games I think.

@RyanCoetzee There’s no centre pairing that has ever played the game of rugby in SA that is better than the combo of Damian De Allende and Lukhanyo Am

After much deliberation, the selection committee (me) has come up with the following post-isolation Springbok 23. 1. Os Du Randt 2. Malcolm Marx 3. Frans Malherbe 4. Eben Etzerbeth 5. Victor Matfield 6. Schalk Burger (can switch to 7) 7. PSdT (Can play 4/5) 8. Duane Vermeulen 9. Fourie Du Preez 10. SFM 11. Brian Habana 12. Jean De Villiers (can play 11, 14) 13. Jasques Fourie 14. Cheslin Kolbe (can play anywhere) 15. Percy Montgomery (can play 10, 13) Ox Nche Bismarck Du Plessis Balie Swart Mark Andrews (Can play 5 and 8) Bakkies Botha/Jean Smith (Depends) Manie Libbok Joost Van der Westhuisen Damian Willemse (Can play 15, 12, 10) Impossible to choose between the loose heads, centres and fullbacks! Percy kicks. SFM/Kolbe back up.

@toothprick69 He was in the running but I wanted a metronomic kicker.

@RyanCoetzee 15. Andrè Joubert

@Bertus4u Peak Am a good call. Descartes might have gone with your choice!

@RyanCoetzee I are because I Am! (Lukhanyo Am)