Tim Cohen

@timcohen.bsky.social

South African journalist, Senior Editor at Currencynews.co.za. Former editor of Business Maverick, Business Day, and the Financial Mail. Blogs at www.timcohen.co.za. Views my own, obvs.

191 Followers | 72 Following | 2,376 Posts | Joined: 23.11.2024 | 1.9523

Latest posts by timcohen.bsky.social on Bluesky

I.am.not.making.this.up 💥Smoke and Mirrors: The glamour, the grift, and the smoky lies we tell ourselves When I smoked, I was always somehow convinced that the act of smoking made me seem more attractive. When people asked why I smoked, I would respond, “Isn’t it obvious? I just looked so much suaver, br...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

27.07.2025 17:47 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PODCAST 📣 Listen Up! Is South Africa disintegrating, and would a kiss cam help? The news of the past week has been worrying, from the crisis in the police, to more news about the construction mafia, to South Africa getting bad press internationally. In this podcast, Mark Barnes ...

www.timcohen.co.za/podcast-list...

22.07.2025 17:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You can’t handle the truth — but the bond market can Why is the truth so difficult? American journalist and social-political activist Gloria Steinem once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” And that captures the heart o...

www.timcohen.co.za/you-cant-han...

06.07.2025 10:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up: 💥 BEE or Bust? SA’s Empowerment Dilemma in the Starlink Spotlight If the Starlink debate has done anything, it has rekindled South Africa’s long-running, anguished and contested debate about Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and affirmative action. Confronted with ...

www.timcohen.co.za/bee-or-bust-...

07.06.2025 06:57 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up. 💥 Fact checking the fact checkers: truthiness in the age of verified outrage Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s theatrical meeting with Donald Trump on Wednesday last week, there has been an absolute outpouring of “fact-checking”. It's been a tidal wave: interviews, opinion...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

29.05.2025 15:51 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up 💥 Bling, books, and base politics: The strange symmetry of Trump and Ramaphosa In the end, they both came away with a book. The much-heralded confrontation between SA President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump, which one US diplomat anticipated would be an “unmitiga...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

22.05.2025 16:27 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

After the Bell: Casting off — my last Bell at Daily Maverick My most enduring, most heartfelt thanks goes to the readers of this column who have been fabulously thoughtful, reactive, instructive and supportive of some views which at times have strayed, I’m prou...

www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025... www.currencynews.co.za www.timcohen.co.za

15.05.2025 08:05 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: What Milei got right, Trump got wrong, and Ramaphosa can't afford to miss There are few things more fun than seeing economists having a fat go at each other and getting proved wrong by history. Perhaps that’s an overstatement; the spectacle of economists arguing is perhaps ...

www.timcohen.co.za/iwhat-milei-...

28.04.2025 12:34 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.Am.Not.Making.This.Up💥: Fingers of cheese and fingers of blame - the transatlantic tiff nobody ordered One of my favourite comic writers, Dave Barry, recently wrote an article on his substack entitled Summer Vacation Travel Tips. It has the subtitle, “I honestly don't have any.” In his comic way, Bar...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

29.03.2025 16:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.Am.Not.Making.This.Up💥: From Pepfar to perdition: sorry Elon, but you are in fact harmful Some time ago, I was granted a one-on-one interview with Bill Gates, the renowned entrepreneur, healthcare buff, and global philanthropist, as everybody knows. To say this was a rare honour would be a...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

22.03.2025 15:10 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up 💥 Don't Poke the Bear: Ebrahim Rasool and the art of diplomatic self-sabotage One likes to be open-minded and free-thinking, but for reasons of diplomacy and decorum (especially if it’s your job), there are things you just don’t say, especially on a recorded zoominar. If you ...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

16.03.2025 13:58 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: South Africans are ghosting the news - but why now? Something odd is happening with the readership of South African news websites; it's dropping like a stone. Why? Is that globally unusual? Will it come back? Who, or what, is responsible? I think most...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

09.03.2025 12:56 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: The ghost of Neville Chamberlain smiles on Washington Foreign policy is often so carefully hedged and circumspect and subsumed by niceties, that it's hard to follow. But then suddenly, there is a moment which penetrates like an icy knife into the very he...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

02.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: VAT’s all, folks! The hot mic that exposed Treasury’s tax turmoil Thank goodness for the occasional hot mic. What politicians say all over the world is now so scripted, and controlled, and preordained, that it's a pleasure when a politician, or banker, or anyone in ...

www.timcohen.co.za/vats-all-fol...

24.02.2025 06:28 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Chainsaws, weirdos, and the shrinking state - why maverick leaders are winning Or... why is reducing the size of government becoming a vote-winner? If there was an iconic image of elections worldwide in 2023/24, it was the Argentinian president-to-be Javier Milei snarling at th...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

18.02.2025 16:12 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

ICYMI: 🔔 The harsh mathematics of land reform in SA President Donald Trump’s executive order on Friday offering to resettle Afrikaner “refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination” invites the question: Is there a violin small enoug...

www.timcohen.co.za/icymi-the-ha...

12.02.2025 16:02 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Sun Tzu vs the two-headed Hydra, or How does SA outmanoeuvre Trump and Musk? What should South Africa do in the face of the sudden emergence of the two-headed Musk/Trump hydra from the depths of the underworld? Well, I think it's worth asking the expert in this field, Sun Tz...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

09.02.2025 13:28 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥Behind the Blackout: The paranoia fuelling SA’s latest load-shedding crisis Just when South Africans thought load-shedding was a thing of the past, it has returned. It's like the Creature from the Black Lagoon or any other horror movie villains - they always return because we...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

02.02.2025 17:05 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: A compendium of commentary on DeepSeek Like a huge number of people on the planet, I have been delighted to tear myself away from the craziness that is President Donald Trump’s first fortnight in office to read extensively about DeepSeek. ...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

30.01.2025 07:37 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

The most interesting (and conflictual) panel at Davos 2025: Kganyago vs Armstrong on crypto The broad ethic of the World Economic Forum’s meeting every year at Davos in Switzerland is about being constructive. The forum prides itself in being a problem-solving institution, which can make it ...

www.timcohen.co.za/the-most-int...

26.01.2025 18:49 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Trust bust 2025 - grievance is the new black Trust is important. Everybody knows that. Writer and academic Stephen Covey, the author of the best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote perhaps the last word on trust: “Trust i...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

23.01.2025 13:11 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Five years of Brexit: neither boom nor doom, just a slow swoon? There is a widespread but terrible journalistic habit of ending analyses with “Only time will tell”. It's the ultimate cop-out; if something is too hard to decide, just say it's too soon to do so. Th...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

20.01.2025 09:45 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Trump card or Trump trap? Should we fear the second coming of the Donald - or welcome it? It's four days until the US presidential inauguration day on Sunday, Janaury 20, 2025. How, one asks oneself at a moment like this, could one alienate the maximum number of people in the minimum amoun...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-no-maki...

16.01.2025 16:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: The elephant in South Africa’s foreign policy room What is it about foreign policy and elephants? It's perhaps not the most common analogy cited when discussing foreign policy - maybe chess is the most frequently used as in, “Diplomacy is the art of k...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

12.01.2025 11:04 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Is the ANC the frog in the boiling water? Or are we? This weekend the ANC will be marking its traditional statement to commemorate its 8 January founding. May I just say right now with almost absolute certainty, it is going to be a non-event. This raise...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

09.01.2025 17:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Uncertain times and the curse of Schrödinger’s cat You have to feel a bit sorry for Schrödinger's cat. From Schrödinger's perspective, the situation is uncertain. But from the perspective of the cat, while things are also uncertain, the consequences o...

www.timcohen.co.za/uncertain-ti...

06.01.2025 04:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: New Year’s resolutions: The fine art of overpromising yourself What exactly is wrong with New Year's resolutions? They are famously unsuccessful, but they remain enormously popular; we are resolute about our resolutions. They have existed for centuries. They conf...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

02.01.2025 15:44 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: People I will miss in 2025 The brink of the new year is a time to look forward but if you'll permit me, just for a second, to look backwards and ask, somewhat plaintively, a distressing but poignant question: who are the people...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

30.12.2024 13:16 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The Big Five forecast: predictions that will define South Africa in 2025 One of my favourite prediction jokes is about the person who asked an astrologer what 2025 would bring and the astrologer replied, “Well … it is very cloudy, but there is a 100% chance of stars.” An...

www.timcohen.co.za/the-big-five...

26.12.2024 17:49 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I.am.not.making.this.up💥: Deck the halls with irony Christmas is when we are enjoined to think of the things that money can’t buy, even though it's the time of year we shop like crazy. If you think about it, this is just the start of the contradictions...

www.timcohen.co.za/i-am-not-mak...

23.12.2024 19:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

@timcohen is following 19 prominent accounts

Geoff
@geoffpanda

Directionally correct, specifically wrong.

Janet Heard
@janetheard

South African Journalist

William Gibson
@greatdismal

Author of Neuromancer and, most recently, Agency (still above from “Kill Switch”, The X-Files, Season 5, Episode 11, co-written with Tom Maddox)

Gavin Newsom
@gavinnewsom

Husband and father. 40th Governor of California. Former Lt. Governor of California. Former San Francisco Mayor. Personal account.

Bellingcat
@bellingcat.com

Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research. Want to support our charity? bellingcat.com/donate

The Onion
@theonion.com

America’s Finest News Source. A @globaltetrahedron.bsky.social subsidiary. Get the paper delivered to your door: membership.theonion.com

maya kosoff
@mayakosoff

writer and editor; small business owner 18olives.com // maya.substack.com

John Dickerson
@jdickerson

https://linktr.ee/john_dickerson

BostonJoan 🏳️‍🌈 🦫
@bostonjoan

I am the founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute and an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies at Boston University www.criticalinternet.org

E.J. Dionne
@ejdionne

Prof. @ McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown, senior fellow @ The Brookings Institution, columnist @ Washington Post. Passionate Celtics fan. Opinions here are my own.

The Lincoln Project
@lincolnproject.us

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln 🏴‍☠️ | Home of #TheBreakdown and LP Podcast

Michelle Goldberg
@michellegoldberg

New York Times opinion columnist; MSNBC contributor; author.

Nicholas Dawes
@nicdawes

Executive Director a @thecityny, news for New Yorkers. Trace amounts of past lives at Human Rights Watch, Mail & Guardian, Hindustan Times may be present.

Michael Cupo
@michaelcupo

Account reserved

God
@skeetofgod

Disappointed but not surprised. Now ruling a brand new universe: https://theskeetofgod.com.

Hennie van Vuuren
@hennievanvuuren

Open Secrets | Open Sesame Stop: graft/grift/greed. For secure messaging and tipoffs - pls contact me on Signal. www.opensecrets.org.za

Anne Applebaum
@anneapplebaum

staff writer @theatlantic. author of GULAG, IRON CURTAIN, RED FAMINE, TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY and AUTOCRACY INC https://linktr.ee/anneapplebaum

Paul Krugman
@pkrugman

Rex Huppke
@rexhuppke

(VERY SERIOUS) USA TODAY humor(ish) columnist. May or may not be notable. Hypocrisy enthusiast. WOKE MOB, CO-FOUNDER. ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (2017 to present).