News/Politics

I’ve met two retired American couples in the past three weeks, both very chatty and pleasant. We met the first, from Phoenix, Arizona, on the ferry to Paramatta; the second, from Los Angeles, stood behind us in the queue at the airport this morning. In both of our conversations, the subject of the US elections […]

Part of Thabo Mbeki’s toxic legacy could well prove to be the disastrous unity deal he engineered between Zanu-PF and the MDC in Zimbabwe. Democracy has been defeated in Zimbabwe, and this largely due to Mbeki’s willingness to legitimise Mugabe’s tyrannous regime through his chairing of the power-sharing negotiations. It was a marriage doomed from […]

The time has come for the ANC to abandon finally the mentality of the liberation movement and become the government of the people of South Africa. Accept that all this talk of divorce and dissention is a blessing in disguise rather than the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. The Zuma trial with all […]

Sarah Palin’s family feud with her former brother-in-law, which formed the subject matter of an investigation dubbed “Troopergate” by the media, finally came home to roost yesterday and the result was not a Norwegian omelette but rather a half-baked Alaskan. The inquiry into the conduct of the governor of Alaska found that she had abused […]

A deep and cold current of fear running through the markets right now is something market commentators will avoid speaking about openly. I’m not referring to the credit crisis and widespread recession. That is worrying enough. I’m talking about the meltdown of stock markets themselves. Markets rise and markets fall, and then rise again. The […]

Submitted by Marius Redelinghuys For many, including myself, it is very difficult to imagine any other political home outside or beyond the African National Congress. This is particularly difficult to imagine as the ruling party has often been seen as the “natural party” of the people as it fought against the oppressive and exclusive apartheid […]

Australians are in a flap once again over the exploitation of children. This time, acclaimed photographer Bill Henson is back in the news. Henson was the centre of public attention earlier in the year when police raided a Sydney art gallery after claims that his photographs of nude adolescents amounted to child pornography. Australia’s arts […]

An ANC split would be good for democracy in South Africa is the recurrent theme running through opposition politics at the moment. A division of the party’s support, which in theory would vastly reduce the ruling party’s majority, would act as a safeguard against using its two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution and against forcing […]

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: What should the focus of a new Lekota party be?

The ANC is not and never has been a democratic organisation. It may be democratically elected by popular vote but this does not mean the structures and institutions that govern it are democratic. Criticism of the ANC is deemed to be “… giving notice to leave the ANC” as stated by ANC NEC member Jeff […]

I can just picture this scenario in the Oval Office. “Whaddave we got here?” (says the president in his best Al Pacino tough-cop voice at his 3 024th murder scene) “Ahem, what we’ve got, Mister President, sir, is the need to restructure our definition of values in order to grasp and predict more clearly worsening fluctuations […]

The year 1955 marked a momentous occasion in the history of the ANC immediately after the defiance campaign of 1952. People from all walks of life converged on the sleepy town of Kliptown to adopt the Freedom Charter, which gave greater meaning to the ideals of the national liberation of the majority of black people […]