Rebecca Davis

WRITER FOR DAILY MAVERICK

❛When Gift of the Givers announced they were on their way to fix things, I can’t be the only one who wished for the hundredth time that we could just chuck the keys to the Union Buildings to Imtiaz Sooliman and be done with it.❜

Why we think she’s brilliant:

She’s funny, sharp, whip smart and opinionated, and she can be withering in her criticism, all of which make for a gifted columnist. It takes a real understanding of the issues to be able to write a column, and it takes an even more profound appreciation of the interconnectedness of things to make it pointedly funny too.

In her 18 July 2021 column, ‘Please don’t talk to me about Mandela right now’, the tone was decidedly sombre. The country had just experienced two weeks of chaos, and the trail of destruction was depressing. It was Mandela Day, and in the spirit that South Africans have always celebrated the day, many went out to help with the cleanup. But it was President Cyril Ramaphosa’s neo-liberal rhetoric about citizens getting together every month to clean up public spaces that Rebecca said made her want to ‘put a fist through my laptop screen’. It’s a line many governments, including the UK and European governments, are taking – expecting NGOs and charities to do the work they are meant to do themselves – but as Rebecca sharply observed: ‘Pick your moment, Mr Prez.’

What drives her: Said tonguein-cheek in an interview: ‘I am constantly afraid that I am going to get something catastrophically wrong in my writing and then I will be unmasked as a charlatan.’