What is a social entrepreneur

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

Visit the Ashoka Website for more information:
What is a social entrepreneur

A Crown For Your Brow, And a Key For Your Hand

on Namibia's 21st birthday, 21 March 2011

This morning once more my country awakes
This day is no normal day though,
No, today my country has come of age,
It is no longer a child,
But an adult member of the world.

I remember its birth many sunrises ago
When I was chosen to raise our new flag,
Looking out from that first maternity ward
Over the rolling hills of our capital Windhoek
The skyline created by the colonialists.

Today, my country receives its key,
The key to unlock things before hidden,
Things that were forbidden to do,
Now maturity must lend a hand
And help in the choices it makes.

During its teenage years,
I became worried as it flirted,
Its political alliances changing shape
Hard words being exchanged during puberty
Crying tears of unanswered love.

As my country becomes more self-assured
Exerting its own will and wants
It is time to step quietly aside,
Assuring it of my undying, continued love
While letting it achieve its own greatness.

Smile, my beloved land on your crown birthday,
You have overcome many a fall or scrape
Some of the scars will remain as proof
All of it part of growing up and learning
Preparing for your role in life

Do not care about your past
The bitted words of things you cannot change
Mould yourself into a strong unified character
Reconciliation will always be your guide
Making every citizen a part of the motherland

From Today, as always, make us proud.

What happened to multicultural identity?

What happened to multicultural identity?: "A few years ago, the Harvard Committee on African Studies asked me to address them on some of the challenges facing our new democracy."


Political institutions structured around identity is a recipe for disaster.

The current provinces deepen ethnic identities and identity interests around being coloured or Indian or Zulu or Xhosa or Pedi.

They should be abolished.

A common South African identity will remain elusive for as long as we do not have a much more cosmopolitan view of space.

Gauteng is an example of the kind of geographical cosmopolitanism I have in mind.

There is no ethnic group that can claim exclusive ownership of the geographic space given the multiple origins and identities of the people who live there. This principle needs to be elevated to the national level.

African People's Organisation / first coloured pressure group in Namibia

The African People's Organisation (APO), originally the African Political Organisation, was formed in Cape Town in 1902 and was initially the most prominent "coloured" pressure group in South Africa. Its interest in SWA/Namibia goes back to at least 1918 when it opposed the transfer of the former German colony to the South Africa Authority. The first SWA branch of the APO was established in Windhoek in February 1923. In informing the colonial authorities of the establishment of the branch, the leaders stated that the aims of the organisation were to defend "the Social Political and Civil Rights of the Cape Coloured Community throughout the SW Protectorate. Another political organisation which devoted itself to representing the Coloured community in SWA, the African National Bond, was also launched in Windhoek in 1925.

The APO, although it recruited its members from the relatively small group of educated and economically comfortably off Coloureds, was to become the most influential political organisation for Coloureds for almost forty years. Although it collapsed as an organisation in the early 1940s, having to give way to more radical organisations, the APO shaped black political thought and culture for decades after its demise.

Consumers International Blog: Financial service providers must go back to their roots

Consumers International Blog: Financial service providers must go back to their roots