About Ismail Lagardien

I write and make pictures…. This blog hosts very random stuff. I started out in journalism as a reporter and news photographer in my early 20s. I took a break at 37 to do some policy-work, then returned to the London School of Economics where I studied Political Economy, Economics, International Politics, African Politics, Strategic Studies and International Political Economy. I broke away, again, afterwards to work in the Office of the Chief Economist of the World Bank, after which I returned to university to do a PhD in International Political Economy at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

I taught at the University of South Carolina and Elon University in North Carolina, in the United States, for six years or so, then returned to South Africa for more policy-work, academia and then returned to writing full-time at the end of 2017. I am currently a columnist and essayist for Business Day, the most influential English-language print-daily; the Daily Maverick the biggest independent (daily) online source for news, commentary, analysis and investigative journalism, and the VryeWeekblad, a weekly newspaper providing exceptional reportage, commentary and analysis in Afrikaans. The Business Day column, and Big Read essays deal mainly with global political economy matters, and with ideas. The Daily Maverick and VryeWeekblad columns are more polemical.

I am also a contributor and an analyst, a (sometimes) broadcast journalist, a visiting professor on political economy, and an external examiner for the Nelson Mandela School of Governance at the University of Cape Town.

Photography

I drifted away from photography (film) by 2001, and made the transition to digital technology in about 2005. In some ways the digital revolution in photography become a secondary concern. That’s probably an over-statement; I simply did not have enough time, as a full-time writer and in academia, to immerse myself in digital photography and stay up to date with the constant revolution and technological innovations. The post-production process of digital photography has to be taken seriously. I am too busy writing, and anyway my main interests in photography shifted to sociology and philosophy (of photography).

I have an active interest in Global Political Political Economy, GeoPolitics and Geo-Strategy with my main interest being in historical capitalism. Most of my published work is in the news media. I have also written chapters in books, and published a memoir/social criticism in 2022. 

I expect to spend much of 2025 in South East Asia working on a book.

My more serious writings are in my columns and essays in Business Day, and the Daily Maverick.

Some Personal Stuff

There was this thing on Facebook a more than a decade ago where you had to list 25 points about yourself. Instead of making 25 points about myself, I have listed, below, passages from film, music and quotes by the thinkers and people who have inspired me, and that appropriately capture ‘my 25 Notes’. One or two may be slightly different from the original.

1. Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it.

2. The… the other important joke, for me, is one that’s usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud’s “Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,” and it goes like this – I’m paraphrasing – um, “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

3. You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.

4. Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.”

5. The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing or ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, ‘I don’t like it!’ ‘It’s boring!’ It is not a point that one can argue; but it is like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.

6. All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

7. I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

8. You end up taking advantage of yourself. There ain’t no way around that.

9. I ain’t king of anything.

10. Like a solitary fir tree egoistically separate I stand, casting no shadow, with only the wood dove building its nest in my branches (own translation)

11. Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.

12. During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

13. I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

14. The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.

15. We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.

16. If you are lonely when you are alone, then you are in bad company

17. To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

18. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

19. The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

20. The reign of the super powers must be over
So many armies can’t free the earth
Soon the rock will roll over
Africa is choking on their Coca Cola

21. The standard of justice depends on the power to compel and … in fact, the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept

22. You are very close to producing a very significant piece of work.

23. If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.

24. The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.

25. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy

Contact me

I generally respond to email messages, (ilagardien at yahoo dot com. or issy at ilagardien dot com) or comments left on any of my web pages. I moderate all posts because this is my personal website, and I really could not be arsed to get involved in meaningless debates. That’s it. That’s all.

All comments will be moderated. If you want to get my attention, do not be sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, skoorsoekerig or just an all-round twat. I am particularly averse to religious or market fundamentalists. Actually, it’s probably a good thing to be a nice person in life – just generally.