Michelle Constant

@richardcalland The most delightfully warm smile. Always

Fink was a giant - physically and intellectually. But also a gentle giant. When I first met him, in 1995, he was Mandela’s legal advisor in the presidency, and I was young, naive and at the start of my career in politics & governance in SA with IDASA…

French journalist Marine Vlahovic is found dead in her home in Marseille while working on a documentary exposing the israeli genocide of #Gaza

It takes enormous courage to report like this while the Israeli IDF tries to kill you. Well done Steve Sweeney.

So sad to hear that our colleague Nicholas Haysom has died – a truly remarkable human being. As a young white activist in South Africa, Nicholas had risked detention to oppose the apartheid regime, later working alongside Nelson Mandela.

SA imports 80% of our fertiliser and 100% of our crude oil. This makes us highly vulnerable to the US-Iran war.

@sherwiebp I’m sorry to hear this #RIP

SABC News has reliably been informed that South African diplomat and veteran senior U.N. official Nicholas "Fink" Haysom has died. Haysom served as President Nelson Mandela's Chief Legal advisor from 1994-1999 and later served in various senior roles at the U.N. including his latest as the SGs Special Representative to South Sudan. He also served in the U.N. Mission in Iraq, as SRSG in Afghanistan and Somalia in a long and storied career. Haysom was 73. We are awaiting an official statement from the U.N. #sabcnews

Joburg spends R23.6m relocating City’s most valuable art to location with security concerns #Echobox=1773820912" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-0…

Just popping in here to say today is Day 10 without water. Following Rand/JHB water’s 20 odd day run without water in February. I don’t know what more to say. Don’t feel words can adequately describe the situation.

🔒EDITORIAL | Parliament has better things to do than start a Afrophobic witch-hunt over foreign academics businessday.co.za/opinion/2026-0…

@RobynPorteous She’s such a great and thought provoking author.

The Book Club I started at work has its first read: “Wanderlust” by Rebecca Solnit (we work on an alphabetical-from-the-bottom roster and so this was my colleague, Zach’s, pick). I started it last night and so far, I am loving it!

Unemployment in South Africa exceeds 30% overall and is close to 60% among young people. Removing business constraints, including licensing and permitting burdens, can help firms grow and hire. Read our Country Focus blog: imf.org/en/news/articl…

What's the point of SARB's lower inflation target if both Eskom and the unions continue to blow it out of the water?

🇿🇦 Adriaan Wildschutt became the first South African to win the New York City Half Marathon, storming to victory in a blistering 59:30 🎽 #SSAthletics

@SVG__Collection #PacesPeople

Happy birthday to the great Sly Stone, born on this day in 1943!

Water ‘blesser’ exposed: the ANC bigwigs who truck water but have no tankers sundaytimes.timeslive.co.za/news/2026-03-1…

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change. That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder. In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book. Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing. A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens. UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain. One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off. The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

Crown shyness is when tree tops avoid touching, creating gaps in the canopy, likely to prevent damage and maximize sunlight.

Despite not owning a single water tanker, two companies linked to ANC Tshwane heavyweights, Eugene “Bonzo” Modise and Rhulani James Shelenge, scored R31.7m for water trucking services during the city’s R777m emergency water supply project. Click link to read more: tinyurl.com/3a3fr33v

Another water tanker scandal exposed under Moya's ANC led Tshwane. After blowing R777 million on tankers. Sunday Times reports 2 ANC Tshwane leaders received R32 million from water tanker tendering despite not even having water tanker trucks!!! Short🧵 on the "water blessers"