‘Oppenheimer’ tops Golden Globes:
“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s drama about the inventor of the atomic bomb, topped the Golden Globes on Sunday — but its fellow summer smash hit “Barbie” missed out on best comedy film honors to “Poor Things.”
“Oppenheimer” took five prizes including best drama, best director for Nolan, best score, as well as acting trophies for Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr.
Nolan told journalists backstage he was drawn to the “tragedy” of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a scientist who remained loyalty to his country and never apologized for his actions, yet was “wracked by tremendous guilt.”
Emma Thomas, the film’s producer and Nolan’s wife, said his work about “one of the darkest developments in our history” was “unlike anything anyone else is doing.”
Murphy, who plays the title character in the three-hour epic, hailed his “visionary director,” while Downey Jr, portraying the protagonist’s bitter rival, praised the movie as a “masterpiece.”
In winning best director, Nolan fended off Greta Gerwig, who helmed “Barbie” — the other half of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that grossed a combined $ 2.4 billion last year at the box office.
Turning nostalgia for the beloved doll into a sharp satire about misogyny and female empowerment, “Barbie” was the leading film heading into the night with nine nominations, but ended the gala with just two prizes.
It won the award for best song, for a tune written by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas. And as the year’s highest grossing movie, it claimed a newly created trophy for box office achievement.
“We would like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on Earth, the movie theaters,” said Margot Robbie, the film’s star and producer.
“Thank you to all the Barbies and Kens in front of and behind the screen,” added Gerwig.
But “Barbie” lost out on best comedy to “Poor Things” — a surreal, sexy bildungsroman which also earned Emma Stone best actress for her no-holds-barred turn as Bella Baxter.
“Bella falls in love with life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure, and that really made me look at life differently,” said Stone.
‘Changing your game’
After an annus horribilis in which the industry was crippled by strikes, A-listers turned out in force to celebrate Sunday.
Stars who were unable to promote their movies during the months-long Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) walkout made up for lost time on the Oscars campaign trail.
Attendees also included big names from the world of music such as Bruce Springsteen and Dua Lipa — both nominated for best song — and Taylor Swift representing her recent concert movie.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL — on the Golden Globes, fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” joked host Jo Koy.
The wins for high-profile films like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were a welcome boon to the new owners of the Globes, which have suffered years of controversy and declining audiences.
Long billed as “Hollywood’s biggest party,” the Globes were boycotted by the industry after allegations of corruption and racism emerged in 2021, and the show was taken off air a year later.
The controversial group of Los Angeles-based foreign journalists that created the Globes 80 years ago has since been disbanded, and a wider net of overseas critics was brought in to choose this year’s winners.
“Golden Globes journalists, thanks for changing your game,” Downey Jr said in his acceptance speech.
‘Historic’
The Globes provide a timely boost for the Oscars.
Nominations voting for the Academy Awards begins Thursday, with the Oscars taking place this year on March 10.
Indigenous actor Lily Gladstone won best actress in a drama for her role in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” delivering some of her emotional speech in the native language of the Blackfeet Nation.
“This is an historic win, it doesn’t belong to just me,” she said.
“This is for every little res kid.”
Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph bolstered their Oscars campaigns with wins for “The Holdovers,” in which they starred as a curmudgeonly history teacher and cook of a 1970s prep school, respectively.
Best screenplay and best non-English language film went to French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.”
The film’s director and co-writer Justine Triet told AFP it was “sort of unreal” to win two prizes, especially in the screenplay category, which included Scorsese, Nolan and Gerwig.
Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” won best animated film.
The Globes also honored the best in television, just a week before the strike-delayed Emmys.
“Succession” dominated, claiming best drama series, and acting wins for stars Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen.
“The Bear” swept the comedy categories, while road-rage saga “Beef” did the same in limited series.
Past Globes host Ricky Gervais, who did not attend, won best stand-up comedy performance, a new category.
© Agence France-Presse
A fresh value system will save South Africa:
South Africa needs a new society-wide consensus replacing the one forged after 1994 following the end of formal apartheid, which every political party, group and community, whatever their ideology, should subscribe to.
In post-World War II, many successful countries, after the conflict, often cobbled together a consensus on key issues, which all political parties, groups and communities, whatever their ideology, religion or past, often agreed to.
For example, in post-war Western Europe, the welfare state, a non-political, reasonably merit-based public service, honesty, basic communal moral values, democracy, rule-based market economy, social compacts between government, business and labour and supporting private entrepreneurs, were the bedrock of consensus in many of these countries.
In Germany, the welfare state, democracy, a productive public service, the social market economy, prudent public finance management, social pacts between government, business, labour and building private industries became the pillars of the post-war consensus. In Switzerland, the national consensus across politics included the acceptance of coalition governments to be part of the national identity, for the country to stay neutral in wars and for the accommodation of four national language groups.
In Japan, the post-World War II consensus was to build a globally competitive manufacturing industry, a merit-based, professional public sector, a basic set of moral values, democratic principles, making Japan the number-one economy in the world and businesses practice a form of company welfare.
There was a society-wide consensus that Japan should prioritise economic growth, avoid military action and reject nuclear weapons. In all these societies, whatever political party comes to power, whether on the left, centrist or right, adheres to the consensus.
The society-wide consensus in South Africa forged after the ending of apartheid in 1994, has now collapsed because of corruption, dishonesty, breakdown of basic moral standards, breakdown of the rule of law, competing governance systems to the Constitution, state failure, tribalisation, the exclusion of large numbers of South Africans based on colour, gender and where they live and uncaring public and government representatives.
What would be the pillars of a new consensus be for South Africa?
The Constitution has to be the apex governance system in the country and no competing governance system should be allowed, whether customary law, township or village communal culture, gang culture or liberation party culture.
Building a democracy as the universal system for all South Africans should be a key part of it. In this context, the best way forward for South Africa is not Afrikaner or African nationalism, but what Michael Ignatieff described as “civic nationalism”, in which the glue that holds communities together is equal rights and shared democratic cultures, values and institutions, rather than ethnic nationalism, whether isiZulu, Indian, Afrikaner or coloured. Citizens of all ethnic, racial and religious groups must embrace democracy, democratic institutions and democratic values and behaviour.
South Africa’s diversity must be accepted by all as a pillar of the country’s identity. Many South Africans appear to think that the country’s diversity is an obstacle to economic growth, development and peace. Embracing, building on and leveraging South Africa’s diversity is crucial to lifting economic growth, inclusive development and maintaining societal peace.
A professional, merit-based, non-politicised public service not aligned to a governing party is a critical pillar of a new consensus. A professional public service is not only key for delivering public services, for a functioning economy and building a common identity, and, therefore, plays a key role in uniting South Africans across race, class and politics.
An accountable, effective and honest public service allows citizens to accept the state — especially in the context of SA’s apartheid state, where many black South Africans saw the state as illegitimate. The public service is critical in diffusing and normalising good moral, democratic, responsive and accountable behaviour, or not, to citizens, and, therefore, helping to install a democratic culture or not society.
The rule of law has to be a central pillar of a new consensus. And everyone, including the politically connected must adhere to the rule of law.
A critical pillar of the new consensus will have to be to tackle racism, tribalism and xenophobia. Because of South Africa’s historical legacy of race-based discrimination, a new consensus must also have redress or social justice as a central pillar. There has to be solidarity for the vulnerable across ethnicity, colour and political affiliation.
However, the redress strategy has to be reimagined. It cannot be on the basis of the current BEE policies which have mostly empowered the politically connected. It will be critical that empowerment policies focus on genuinely uplifting not only the poor, but the widest number of people at the same time, whatever their race, colour or political affiliation — rather than a small elite, whether white or black or both.
Empowerment will have to deliver skills, quality education and entrepreneurial opportunities, business finance and home ownership to ordinary people, not just the politically connected. In the immediate period, South Africa needs a basic income grant, but one which is linked to an ecosystem of skills development, entrepreneurship, democratic civic education, active citizenship and strengthening individual agency.
This must also target South Africa’s unemployed youth, including those unskilled, unschooled and graduates. For youth in particular, grants should also be linked to technical training — skills the economy needs, such as plumbing, early childhood development and adult basic education.
Conditions for grants could include compulsory democratic citizens education which would include understanding the Constitution, democratic moral behaviours and gender equality. Recipients could also be asked to volunteer in their communities, whether cleaning streets or guarding schools.
There has to be a social pact between government and business — not misguided failed attempts at social pacts. But a new social pact must include a jobs pledge to get millions of post-school youth into getting technical training, entrepreneurship skills, access to business finance and job opportunities, in partnership with business.
There has to be a national consensus to tackle apartheid-induced mass trauma. Mass trauma leaves individuals, families and communities so broken that many struggle to engage fully in the life of intimate relationships, democracy, the state, development initiatives, business and in the workplace. It leaves many with pervasive, deep-seated and persistent feelings of angst, insecurity and with inferiority complexes.
Crucially, it destroys the agency of individuals: the ability to act on one’s own will, despite the constraints of belief systems one has grown up with, others’ perceptions of one and a limiting environment.
Unless state-building, development, empowerment and workplace development programmes tackles the deep-seated insecurity trauma leaves victims with, it will not only impact the individual, undermining their health, bringing toxicity into their personal relations, impairing their decision-making, it will also bring toxicity into the state, development and empowerment programs and the organisations traumatised individuals work for.
Anti-poverty strategies must be multidimensional in that it must include self-esteem, self-love and self-care. It should be compulsory to have self-care, self-esteem and self-love as part of all government empowerment, public works and community building programmes.
Recipients of government social grants, financial support and scholarships must be compelled to attend civic, democracy and self-esteem, self-love and self-care programmes. All other areas of human interaction — social, religious, cultural and political organisations — should include self-love, agency assertion and self-esteem as part of their induction, training and wellness programmes.
The state should consider deploying an army of community counsellors — which could also be a practical form of job creation — across the country to provide support.
Delivering quality public services, making the country safe, creating job, business and empowerment opportunities as well as strengthening democracy, will help boost the self-esteem, self-love and individual agency of the formerly oppressed. Critically, the state must treat citizens with dignity, care and efficiency.
Finally, there has to be a new consensus to change the country’s national culture, the way citizens engage with others, what is seen as acceptable social norms, values and behaviour — many of these have been corrupted. Many South Africans often do as they please, behave selfishly, irresponsibly and ignoring the well-being of others.
This ranges from people playing loud music and hosting drunken parties late into night in townships, suburbs or public parks, without any care for neighbours; or smokers mindlessly smoking in public places, causing harm to non-smokers; or simply, somebody littering in public spaces.
Similarly, often those who protests in defence of their “rights” — whether it is the Fees must Fall protests, strikers demanding wage increases or communities demanding better public services — often deliberately harming others, whether innocent bystanders or opponents, destroy private property, such as factories and public assets, such as libraries. In exercising their “rights,” they destroy the rights of others.
To ensure mass behaviour changes there has to be greater enforcement of duties, responsibilities and accountabilities by the authorities. Ultimately, elected public representatives must also exercise their duties, responsibilities and accountability to their citizens – in order to install a culture of duties, responsibilities and accountability by ordinary citizens in their own spheres.
William Gumede is the founder of the Democracy Works Foundation and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).
Improving work conditions in Africa, where occupational accidents are rising :
Africa is slowly becoming a dream hub of technology and innovation, but employee rights must be guaranteed
It’s known that global companies often don’t respect worker’s safety guidelines by offering them the right equipment. Moreover, some don’t consider training necessary in some jobs since they require a limited skill set. Unfortunately, this is a disaster recipe for people being injured gravely at work, whether it’s a construction site or an office.
The industries that pose the most significant occupational risks include manufacturing, construction, transportation and storage. At the same time, temporary or part-time employees are considerably more exposed to dangers since they might provide their services without a contract or legal framework.
Standards in worker safety were never correctly adjusted in accordance with the type of job, the employees’ average age and the nature of the workload. However, this was more impactful in some areas than others. For instance, in Europe, the rates of occupational accidents are lower compared to Asia, where 65% of the global work-related mortality occurs. According to the UN Global Compact, Africa is second, with a rate of 11.8%. Europe follows closely, then the Americas and Oceania being the last on the list.
This article focuses on Africa, where the people with the best potential are exposed to risks and hazards due to corruption. But how can this be changed?
Workplace accidents happen everywhere
Although labour standards are similar worldwide, they’re often not prioritised. Welfare facilities, a healthy work environment and a generally safe workplace are required at any job, but that doesn’t ensure employees’ total safety. Even in developed areas, such as the United Kingdom, where the number of fatal work-related injuries decreased considerably in the past years, workers have to rely on protests for better pay and claiming compensation for accidents.
According to https://www.personalinjuryclaimsuk.org.uk/, those who work in manufacturing and human health suffer the greatest number of accidents while at work due to lack of proper equipment or training. Moreover, many others worsened their health since poor working conditions and heavy workloads pressed workers.
However, working in Africa is different
While physical accidents are common worldwide, there are specific challenges in Africa relating to poor work environments. For example, there’s a lot of discrimination in workplaces and sites, which hasn’t been solved by the Labour Administration Convention since inspections aren’t properly assessed, making workplaces rather vulnerable and workers easier to exploit.
The increasing inequality between vulnerable groups and regular workers has deepened, mainly since the financial and economic crises in the world affected Africa. Stereotypes and the lack of standard national equality policies lead to an unprecedented absence of understanding of critical concepts regarding work practices and worker’s rights.
Therefore, the real issue stands in the social framework in which people conduct their services, which needs a better base of employee rights, starting with solving harassment problems. Although companies provide training for reporting specific issues at work, it’s unclear whether they’re efficient or not.
Technology can help African workers
While in other parts of the world automation is feared due to increasing accuracy, in Africa, it could be the tool that helps workers boost their productivity and contribution to the economy. At the same time, the cost of adopting technology would most likely help firms be up to the increasing demand for products and create more jobs.
Technology can enter the African market and benefit the economy only with the right investments. The base of building the right environment consists of better working policies coming from improved entrepreneurship skills. However, developing workers’ competencies also requires better childhood education and healthcare improvements.
There’s also the need for digital technologies to open access to markets and ensure firms can leverage their features to help upgrade workers’ skills and maintain a safe work environment. Still, this wouldn’t be complete without a consistent investment in social protection coverage from the government. Employees need better social protection and safety nets because this allows them to continue working and support their lifestyles.
The future of sub-Saharan Africa is here
African startups are already showing what they’re capable of reaching the Technology Pioneers list in 2022 through fundraising. However, not all regions are attractions for foreign investors, considering west Africa primarily provides value through deals, followed by east, north and southern Africa.
These startups contributed significantly to improving African regions by developing financial, IT and communication sectors. Together, these startups are valued at more than $ 1 billion, meaning they achieved unicorn status. However, the healthcare industry has the slightest interest when it comes to investments.
The main challenges to Africa’s business potential
Besides better working conditions, it’s essential that Africa improves its business areas because this is how jobs that maintain standards are created. Many of these startups lack capital but are also in need of talent to take their tasks to the next level.
At the same time, only 27% of startups will be founded by females in 2022, which might increase in the future when equality improves. This factor is significant in harnessing a diverse business ecosystem in which every African has access to work and better lifestyle conditions. Luckily, startup accelerators boost the entrepreneurial talent in Africa through training and constant learning.
Completing these elements ensures global coverage of the potential of these businesses, allowing corporations to partner with more African startups and small companies as they bring something new to the business area. Regardless, Africa is slowly becoming a dream hub of technology and innovation. Still, this emergence should spread across the continent in order to bring financial resources to places where they’re needed to create more jobs and improve one’s life quality.
Final considerations
Africa has great potential to become the most extraordinary continent, but challenges in working conditions hinder it from further development. Business ecosystems are currently facing issues of discrimination, stereotypes and lack of proper training, therefore blocking the improvement of local businesses and communities. However, there’s a lot of talent in Africa, and startups prove their capabilities by ticking the unicorn feature and bringing technology into their countries to make it affordable and valuable to the population.
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