The African National Congress’ policy conference kicked off in Johannesburg this week. Its intellectual equivalent of mud wrestling was over a truckload of documents analysing party organisational renewal, nationalisation, job creation, investment and land redistribution. There was also President Jacob Zuma’s catchily titled but ponderously composed Second Transition centrepiece of policy proposals, which is his […]
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Of Marxist wastelands and aborted transitions
On the occasion of the African National Congress’s 100th anniversary early this year, there was a literary text that kept playing inside my subconscious mind every time I watched or read about this momentous event – one of the most significant of our time. It is a passage from Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah: […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Global population dynamics and its implications for sustainable development
In 2011 the planet’s population exceeded the threshold of 7-billion people. Based on data from the most recent United Nations (UN) population projections, the world’s population will swell to over 9-billion by the year 2050. As a result of these population growth forecasts, between now and the year 2050, approximately as many people will be […]
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The African Renaissance for Dummies
I’m probably going to make a fool of myself publishing this column, as it is about the economy, and I know very little about the economy. Until very recently, for instance, I was still under the impression that the Eurozone was a trance state one reaches during deep meditation. Apparently, it’s not that at all, […]
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Is identifying with Nazism problematic?
As those who have been reading the Sunday Times over the past couple of weeks may know, St. John’s College, one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious private schools, was recently embarrassed by a mock Nazi demonstration conducted by some of its pupils at a school assembly. What happened was that for “Moustache Day”, one of the […]
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The importance of private sector growth and development in Africa
The private sector is Africa’s primary engine of growth. It generates an estimated 70 percent of Africa’s output, approximately two-thirds of its investment and 90 percent of employment on the continent. Based on these statistics supplied by the African Union (AU), the creation and development of private sector jobs is seen as one of the […]
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Joyce Banda and the IMF: A dangerous courtship
There is nothing new under the sun. Absolutely nothing. Not even woman presidents. Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba are among the very first of notable women leaders in the annals of history who wielded massive influence on what was then a global stage. Cleopatra (late 69 BCE – August 12, 30 BCE) in particular, […]
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In praise of animals – our fellow creatures
Animals – and not just pets, all kinds of animals – do not enjoy the care and acknowledgement of being our veritable brothers and sisters, as living beings, that they should by right receive. This much is beyond debate. The obscene practice of killing rhino for the supposedly medicinal and/or aphrodisiac properties of their horns, […]
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Street politics: A new twist to an old tactic
The yoof are on the march. Again. It does not make for a pretty picture, although it is a politically fascinating one. The issues vary from train fares at the micro level to unemployment, rural deprivation and racism at the macro. The strategy, however, is uniform, calculated and well tested in South Africa. It is […]
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Grading the ANC policy document on education
By Robyn Clark In March 2012, the ANC released a series of documents intended to stimulate discussion around what the ANC has achieved over the last 18 years in South Africa, and what it should further achieve in the future. The aim of the documents is to encourage discussions around the policy process, which will […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Pantomime of the parvenu
South Africa is a particularly fractious society. Rarely does a week pass without something stirring the country’s intellectuals from their silences. The noise generated by this fractiousness says more, perhaps, about South Africa’s collective neurosis, than it does about anything else. What is amusing to behold, though, is the theatrics of intellectuals that play out […]
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South Africa as a democratic developmental state: Bureaucratically not there yet
By Elnari Potgieter As part of the 2011 State of the Nation address, President Zuma claimed, “Our goal is clear. We want to have a country…where the quality of life is high.” His statement ties in with the South African government’s vision of constructing South Africa as a developmental state, which frames the agenda for […]