Engineering News | Martin Zhuwakinyu

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Martin Zhuwakinyu

Martin Zhuwakinyu is Senior Deputy Editor for Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Dr Zhuwakinyu holds a PhD in communication (media studies) from the University of South Africa.

Humanoid’s exciting journey

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 19th May 2023 It must be five years ago now. Or slightly longer. But whatever. Back then, I wrote in this column about a latter-day Melchizedek of sorts, who, unlike the Old Testament character, is female. I thought of checking in on her, and she definitely has had a very interesting journey ever since. For... →

Coalition era beckoning?

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 12th May 2023 I did not know of Thapelo Amad at all prior to his short-lived tenure as the mayor of Johannesburg. Just as I was beginning to form an opinion of him, he resigned, but that was not before I had concluded that he was seriously out of his depth as the city’s number one citizen and that those who... →

Staggering news illiteracy

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 5th May 2023 Achraf Hakini, a star defensive midfielder for French football club Paris Saint-Germain, should have significant name recognition in a football-loving country such as South Africa, given his exploits at the last FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where he starred for the national squad of his native... →

Brazen and endemic

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 28th April 2023 Thabo Bester’s soapy-like prison escape in May last year and his equally dramatic capture in Tanzania this month are decidedly among the biggest talking points now – not only in South Africa but also in neighbouring countries and beyond. Almost equally riveting has been Qatari television station... →

Absurd territorial claim

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 21st April 2023 A rather curious motion has been introduced in Lesotho’s Parliament. It seeks to reclaim all of South Africa’s Free State province, as well as parts of Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape – all of which were occupied by Basotho until their seizure in the nineteenth... →

SADC’s bounded awarenesss

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 14th April 2023 That Zimbabwe is one of the problem children of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is not in doubt. It’s also beyond question that, despite this dubious honour, leaders of the bloc’s member countries are superfast to close ranks behind their counterparts in Harare whenever... →

It’s okay to want to lead

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 7th April 2023 The Democratic Alliance’s (DA's) federal congress, held last week, included a two-way leadership contest that pitted the incumbent, John Steenhuisen, against former Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse and was noticeably dissimilar to the approach taken by the governing African National Congress (ANC).... →

Better English, better GDP?

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 31st March 2023 Conventional wisdom has it that our kids attaining a high degree of proficiency in the so-called STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics is an absolute must if this country is to be economically competitive in a world that is becoming more technologically advanced. There... →

Madame Prez-in-Waiting

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 24th March 2023 Namibia is something of a rarity in Southern Africa. I mean ‘southern’ as defined in the dictionary, not as the word is understood by the fellows at SADC House, in Gaborone, Botswana, to whom distant islands such as Seychelles and the Comoros are located in Southern Africa. The country was the... →

Mampara Number 2

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 17th March 2023 Tunisia, a small North African nation, has had a lot of bad press of late. This comes on the back of a campaign against immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, with reports rife of random identity checks and violent arrests, sometimes leaving children stranded as their parents are driven away. The... →

Aged face of governance

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 10th March 2023 At the time of writing, Bola Tinibu had just been named Nigeria’s President-Elect, after the wizened former governor of Lagos, Africa’s largest city, had shrugged off challenges from contenders who included perennial loser Atiku Abubaker in elections held on February 25. Tinubu is officially aged... →

Beware of political scammers

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 3rd March 2023 A disclaimer first: this piece is not exactly original, as it draws heavily from a recent Twitter thread by Zakes Mda, the acclaimed South African novelist, poet and playwright who currently lives in the US, where he is a professor of creative writing. The Twitter thread in question mentions a... →

Emigration silver lining

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 24th February 2023 Alan Knott-Craig Jnr, the namesake son of the former boss of telecoms giant Vodacom, wrote in his 2008 book that emigration will never beat living and working in one’s own country. As an illustration, he said those who settle in foreign countries miss little things such as regular “remember when... →

Forced return to the office

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 17th February 2023 Loadshedding has become a new normal in South Africa, with the intensity having worsened in the past two years, and word is that we should brace ourselves for this scourge for at least the next 18 months. That means another one-and-a-half years of disruption to the routines of individuals and... →

Corruption-accused contenders

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 10th February 2023 Apologies in advance: for the umpteenth time, I cite Kenyan public intellectual, anticorruption crusader and pan-Africanist PLO Lumumba’s take on Africans’ attitude to corrupt politicians, which, he says, is more accommodating that is the case on other continents. In a 2021 Facebook post, he... →

African governance flatlining

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 3rd February 2023 Sudanese philanthropist Mo Ibrahim is someone all of us should be proud of; among other things, he uses part of his vast wealth, made from investments in telecommunications, to incentivise African heads of State to uphold good governance standards through his namesake foundation’s Leadership... →

Un-Presidential spats

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 27th January 2023 What is it with African Presidents? All too frequently, incumbents and their predecessors tend to squabble – to put it mildly – over all manner of issues. South Africa is no exception, with the protagonists in the latest drama being President Cyril Ramaphosa and the man those who are big on clan... →

Humanitarian crisis hot spots

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 20th January 2023 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has grabbed headlines internationally since it started in February last year because of its global ripple effects – shocks to supply chains, energy markets and food supply – has been particularly ruinous. But that hasn’t been enough to thrust the country to the... →

Under-the-radar scourge

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 16th December 2022 It’s logical to assume that Africa is the go-to continent if one wants to breathe clean air most of the time, given its small contribution of just 4% to global greenhouse-gas emissions. But pollution is more widespread on the continent than many assume, and is exerting a heavy human toll, with... →

African glaciers’ twilight years

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 9th December 2022 Africa continues to bear the brunt of climate change, despite being responsible for a measly 4% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Now we are told its remaining glaciers on three mountain tops – all in East Africa – will be gone by 2050. That’s a mere 28 years from now. The three... →

Italian PM’s little lie

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 2nd December 2022 Italy, where a rightwing leader assumed the reins in October, and France have been locked in a war of words over Europe-bound Africans crossing the Mediterranean. The neighbours’ relations soured rapidly last month when 234 immigrants who had been turned away by Italy were rescued by a charity... →

Kagame’s silver lining

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 25th November 2022 I’m not a great fan of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The fellow is not big on genuine democracy and doesn’t brook any serious political opposition, with some of those perceived to be a threat to his apparent plan to govern until 2034 having been eliminated, allegedly by his hit squads. But there... →

Ruto, perish multi-term idea!

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 18th November 2022 Is Kenya’s new President, William Ruto, intent on governing for longer than the permissible two five-year terms? While his party moved swiftly to distance itself from a public announcement by one of its Parliamentarians earlier this month that plans were afoot to replace the constitutional limits... →

The scourge of Twitter bots

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 11th November 2022 So, the new Twitter lord, South African-born US tycoon Elon Musk is to introduce an $8-a-month charge for its Blue service, where a blue check mark next to the username on the social media platform signifies that Twitter has confirmed that the account belongs to the person or organisation... →

Our quiet-quitting leaders

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 4th November 2022 Quiet quitting refers to the practice whereby employees strictly stick to what is in their job description and, once they are away from the office, leave work behind them and focus exclusively on nonwork activities, even if there are reasons to sacrifice some of their free time for the sake of... →

SA’s exceptionalism myth

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 28th October 2022 With the great Nelson Mandela at its helm back in 1994, South Africa appeared to be on a trajectory different to the trajectories of other countries on the continent, many of which had seen the early promise of the democracy dividend go up in smoke as the new rulers – erstwhile comrades in the... →

African English

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 21st October 2022 I previously wrote about how our versions of the English language have found their way into mainstream English – ‘our’ being the possessive pronoun for the sons and daughters of the African soil. For instance, it is now perfect English to say next tomorrow (which is commonplace in Nigeria)... →

Amazing functional stupidity

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 14th October 2022 Functional stupidity, a phenomenon that is often encountered in workplaces, refers to a situation where smart people refrain from speaking up when they are convinced that tweaking the way their organisation goes about its business will do the organisation a world of good. At the root of such... →

The sanctions mirage

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 7th October 2022 I’m aware that our political overlords in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, as is the case with their counterparts elsewhere, have at their disposal experts providing advice on all manner of issues – from politics to economics and how not to fall foul of the law. Given... →

A mampara who backed off

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 30th September 2022 It may be old hat now, but it bears mentioning in this column that Michael O’Leary, the mampara who runs Ryanair, finally regained his marbles and has been experiencing a prolonged period of lucidity for the past couple of months: the low-cost Irish airline no longer requires South African... →

Britain’s final rout?

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 23rd September 2022 As news of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s passing broke on the evening of September 8, Twitter (and presumably other social media platforms as well) went into overdrive, with many of those who weighed in lamenting the demise of the 96-year-old monarch. Others, however, were utterly uncharitable,... →

Noisy diplomacy

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 16th September 2022 Phophi Ramathuba may not have been a household name beyond Limpopo province, where she is the MEC for Health, until last month, but this is not the case anymore, after a video clip in which she is seen haranguing an immigrant patient in a public hospital ward went viral on Twitter. The gist of... →

Majoring in minors

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 9th September 2022 Please fill me in, someone: Do we now have places in South Africa where conversations are sprinkled with phrases such as “Habari, rafiki yangu?” or words such as “Karibu”? To those who might be bemused, this is Swahili, the lingua franca in much of East Africa, and I ask because we were told a... →

Social media minefield

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 2nd September 2022 Social media are changing the political landscape across the globe, including in Africa, where Presidents and other top politicians are using various platforms, especially Twitter, to mobilise and grow their constituencies. Data collected in January by French multilingual news network Africanews... →

Oil companies’ immoral greed

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 26th August 2022 Food inflation around the world is at stratospheric levels, with an important indicator, the World Bank’s Food Price Commodity Index, having surged by more than 80% in the past two years. The key drivers have been supply -chain disruptions stemming from measures imposed by governments in 2020 to... →

Mzansi’s got talent

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 19th August 2022 That South African universities are top notch is in no doubt at all. In fact, a few of them are the best in Africa and among the best internationally. This hasn’t gone unnoticed, with some proudly South African dons having been appointed to prestigious positions at equally prestigious foreign... →

Zambian Prez’s labour of love

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 12th August 2022 Politicians tend to promise voters heaven on earth during election time but become preoccupied with enjoying the benefits of public office instead of bringing about positive change for citizens once voted into power. In the 1980s, many African governments vowed that there would be health for all... →

China’s change of tack

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 5th August 2022 Many countries in Africa and elsewhere have been the beneficiaries of China’s largesse for many years. This has largely been in the form of financing for infrastructure projects, and I have often cautioned against getting heavily indebted to the Asian nation, given its tendency to show little or... →

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