News/Politics

Despite a probably genuine belief in press freedom, the DA has an uneasy relationship with the media.

I have recently been doing some research on the concept of hegemony and the various theoretical models used in political science to analyse this concept. Without boring readers with the various academic arguments and their ideological underpinnings, I have been looking at the role of South Africa in the Southern African region and the foreign […]

Much as the majority of those who bother to vote will vote for the ANC, there is an increasing number of members, supporters and sympathisers who are increasingly “gatvol” or fed up with how it does things. In fact, some people have threatened or chosen to refrain from participating in the forthcoming local elections. But […]

President Jacob Zuma in an interview with Beeld newspaper published Thursday said that he is confident that South Africa would never become a Tunisia in reference to the ongoing service delivery protests. The president was quoted as saying : “I can tell you there will never be a Tunisia in South Africa. We have a […]

The last decade has seen a remarkable surge in US economic interest in the continent of Africa. Policymakers who once considered Africa the languid backwater of global economics are now rushing in to stake a claim in the continent’s enormous resource endowment. Most of this effort operates with a rhetoric focused on “partnership” and “development”, […]

Ronald Reagan turned 100 this month, and his legacy continues to shape American politics from the social democrat White House to that woman from Alaska — especially in the realm of statecraft. Reagan, like President Barack Obama in 2008, was elected on a “transformational ticket” and, indeed, the former — politics apart — is said […]

The recent press coverage of my colleague, professor Pierre de Vos’s critique of a speech by advocate Jeremy Gauntlett, made me think about the question of ideology again. In his critique, De Vos writes: “For me what would be interesting and worthwhile would be to have a conversation (or even a heated argument) about the […]

Bono, the frontman for Irish group U2, couldn’t help himself it seems and decided to enter the debate about the struggle song “shoot the boer” which had its moment during apartheid but now has no place in South Africa no matter where or when it is sung. In terms of the Afrikaner community the persistence […]