Helen Zille faces a disciplinary hearing from her party as an apparent “litmus test” of its credibility as a champion for the people. President Jacob Zuma, similarly, is facing off with NEC members for his shenanigans, having already navigated the party’s ethics committee, the stalwarts and having subjugated its youth and woman’s leagues. The president, it […]
ANC
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
10 things Ramaphosa should do in his first 100 days as president
Let’s imagine for a minute Ennerdale and Coligny have stopped burning. The knife-fight in the ANC is over and the 2019 elections have come and gone. Now Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is the fifth democratically elected president of South Africa – and will have inherited a deeply flawed country with a stagnant economy and a […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
The fatal hermeneutic divide in South Africa
Many people are bound to have thought of Alan Paton’s novel, Cry the Beloved Country, in the wake of recent events in South Africa. And everyone who have thought of it as a suitable response to these events may be forgiven. But there’s a saying, that people get the government they deserve, and it is […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The pro-poor rhetoric of the ANC government has failed to translate into meaningful economic policy
In my previous Op-Ed in this column I raised a serious concern whether the ANC-led government has paid required attention and effort to effectively address the structural manifestations of the apartheid legacy in a systematic and vigorous way beyond the usual public rhetoric about the evils of the system and the often repeated promise of […]
Posted inGeneral
Why the ANC continues to flounder and defend the power of patronage
In my previous contribution in this column “The ANC must undergo creative destruction to re-invent and survive”, the theme of my message was that the task of reinventing the ANC and re-positioning its brand cannot succeed without a leadership overhaul. As the latest events have sadly confirmed, the urge to maintain the status quo trumps […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, News/Politics
Where is the wealth Malema wants to redistribute?
In a conversation about South Africa’s socio-economic malaise with a thoughtful sociologist from abroad, he asked the burning question that is shaping South African politics: “where is the wealth?” We talk often in South Africa about wealth redistribution, black economic empowerment and socio-economic rights. Our constitution at the outset sketches a socially just society as […]
Posted inGeneral
Has the time for ‘talks about talks’ come in SA?
The student protests of the last year are reminiscent of the 1976 student uprisings. Those protests were the precursor to a political change in South Africa less than a decade later. When young, educated “born free” South Africans express anger and impatience it’s time to pay attention. They have shown they want action. They want […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The assassination of Shaka the unifier is a lesson for the ANC
South Africans celebrate the enigmatic historical figure of Shaka Zulu, the military revolutionary who rose from illegitimacy to be a unifying monarch who used alliances and the occasional judicial assassination to build a Zulu powerhouse on South Africa’s east coast in the 1800s. Ironically, while Shaka’s use of military power, diplomacy and patronage succeeded at […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Better organisation would make Fees Must Fall more successful
There are so many phenomenal stories about our political freedom that are less told. The story of Ruth First is such a story. First was a white women who forwent personal privilege and devoted her life to the anti-apartheid struggle. She was eventually killed by the apartheid government in 1982. Yesterday, I attended an event […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
#Fallist culture: The emergence of African fascist nationalism
On how notions of pan-Africanist identity, post-apartheid liberation ideology and demographics are coalescing to give rise to African fascist nationalism Across Africa we’ve witnessed the worst of political permutations as she vaunted herself out from under colonial exploitation. In many instances pseudo-democracy was achieved as a facade for a new black capitalist elite that mobilised the […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General
Our fragile economy demands leadership with strategic foresight
Economic prosperity for any nation is not an outcome achieved on the basis of one policy focus and strategy. It is a result of a carefully chosen and managed set of development drivers and priorities in a complex system with a causal network of linkages that must work together to deliver the economic growth and […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
What most South Africans don’t know, but can probably guess
The book by R.W. Johnson that I recently referred to, namely, How Long Will South Africa Survive? – The Looming Crisis (Jonathan Ball, 2015), is giving a lot of people nightmares, I’ll bet. Not only because of the unsustainable cost of the inflated public service, but for a lot of reasons, all set out in […]