News/Politics

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe contemporary politics is about tribalism. The current division is not amaXhosa Mbeki-ites vs amaZulu Zuma-ites. Ethnic differences barely count in the contemporary clashes over succession. But, still, there is something about the history of the amaXhosa that just conceivably has a bearing on the way things are. The […]

If I were the legal adviser to suspended National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli — and if my client had very deep pockets — I would immediately have lodged an application in the Constitutional Court challenging the legality of the inquiry now conducted by Frene Ginwala on behalf of President Thabo Mbeki. It seems […]

Commentator Xolela Mangcu asked last week what Mandela would think of the current political warfare. The answer can be guessed. But there’s a more profound question to consider: How would he, and we, analyse the way democratic debate has deteriorated into devastating factionalism? One answer lies in Mbeki’s penchant for a centralist style of power. […]

The reactions, ranging from disillusionment to disgust, of the legal fraternity and the public at large to the judiciary in general and the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) resulting from the latter’s decision on Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe should not be underestimated. The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that urgent action is required to mitigate […]

While much has been written about the sacking of the National Prosecuting Authority’s Vusi Pikoli and the indemnities handed out to, inter alia, Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizel Smith, one important issue still has be clarified. Regardless of whether you feel the Scorpions were right or wrong in handing out these indemnities in terms […]

I’ve often thought that many name change critics approach the debate with a certain intellectual dishonesty. Most of the time I hear that South Africa should not change a name of a city, road, river or geographic region because of the “cost” involved. Critics will usually juxtapose the cost of the name change with how […]

Back in the struggle days, delineations were political. The regime stood for racism; the white opposition for deracialised capitalism. There were the black consciousness people, the non-racial ANC, the workerists in the unions, and the commies who believed in delaying socialist revolution for a national democratic one. Politics was easy to explain. But it’s been […]

We have many things of which to be proud in this country. The way we treat sick people is not one of them. Recent reports have focused attention again on the awfulness that faces the poor and weak when they try to access public healthcare — child deaths at Frere Hospital and babies kept in […]

While the Zimbabwean crisis is deepening, the continued focus on the description of the crisis at the expense of finding solutions to it has been unhelpful. That the main protagonists in the crisis have dug themselves into entrenched positions from which they are unwilling or incapable of extricating themselves also is unhelpful. In an effort […]

I’m consistently amazed — no, make that, concerned — at the amount of seemingly intelligent people who still hold this opinion. It’s easy to write off the usual suspects for comments like this, but when people in their 30s with professional careers in high-powered positions make a comment like this around dinner tables, it beggars […]