After being sacked from the Sunday Times for an allegedly racist column, David Bullard speaks to Gill Moodie of Grubstreet about why he apologised to Jacob Zuma, and how tough it's been to rebuild his reputation.

Despite famously shutting down his blog when with the Sunday Times, saying "this is for the birds", David Bullard is now loving being paid to write blogs and arguing with people in the comments threads.

His Out to Lunch column is on Moneyweb, he has a new column on the Richmark Sentinel and one with Michael Trapido of Thought Leader.

Bullard explains his need to fight back the allegations of racism that he describes as "emotive" and "extraordinarily damaging". "Instead of going tail
between legs and hiding away somewhere in the Free State, I was on
every radio and TV station who invited me to go on and discuss it. I
decided that I would make a comeback. I think the fact that Alec Hogg
(of Moneyweb), who is a respected business commentator, took on the Out
to Lunch column says an awful lot for it as well.

Bullard is also taking the Sunday Times to the Labour Court to contest his dismissal. All he really wants, he says, is an apology: "I'm going for reinstatement because I contest I was wrongfully dismissed".

The case with the Sunday Times is part of Bullard's reason for his apology to Jacob Zuma. 

"The fact is that having been on the other side, I also felt that we had
been a little unfair and he didn’t have to accept the apology. But he
did and I was very impressed with that. He didn’t interrupt me when I
spoke to him. I was impressed with the way he did it. 

We then spent 30
minutes chit-chatting about all sorts of things. I think he’s an
incredibly resilient man. I asked him if he ever got depressed about all the comments (made about
him) and he just said no. I think he just takes it. I would have been
hugely depressed about it, including (the things) written by the paper
I used to work for – especially the things I’d written…"

Read Gill Moodie's full interview with David Bullard on Grubstreet.