Thought Leader

The prospect of living in a ‘world without electricity’ in South Africa has become a spectre that looms ever-larger by the day, as a mismanaged, looted-to-the-bone Eskom struggles to keep the ‘lights on’ — a misleading metaphor, insofar as it stands for the entire electricity-based economy of this country. In the era of fake news…

In India, the caste system controls everything, even with the modernisation that has made parts of the caste system illegal. It regulates occupation, vocation, profession and education by determining who gets what opportunity. It determines association, such that the freedom of association is limited insofar as not enabling cross-caste association. In India it is the…

A thought for the day: When the First World War ground to a halt exactly 100 years ago, Germany was heavily penalised financially. Financial reparations to the Allies were set at 369-billion gold marks, equivalent to about 96 000 tons of gold, but after complaints that the payments were bankrupting a struggling nation the amount…

The current elective conference of the ANC makes me think, involuntarily, of the decline of this once-proud, 105-year old organisation, to the point where it has been too weak to do the obvious thing, namely to ‘recall’ (their chosen euphemism for discharge, or fire) their current (and soon-to-be-replaced) president, Jacob Zuma. The funny thing, which…

Factually, all state presidents are being blackmailed. They are being threatened and extorted by their own people, their own party bosses, their own funders, their own supporters and their own handlers. Regardless of which country, regardless of which regime; all state presidents are being blackmailed. In comparison, prime ministers are merely besieged by those around…

By Zukiswa Mqolomba Former President Thabo Mbeki’s OR Tambo lecture is indeed most welcome as it is a timely call to action to save the African National Congress (ANC) from a burgeoning trend of greed, avarice and an insatiable appetite to amass personal wealth, while millions of South Africans continue to live in wide-spread poverty…

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…

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…

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…

By Annabel Raw Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and is heavily dependent on aid. About 40% of its annual budget comes from international donors. However, following the revelation of a massive corruption scandal dubbed “cashgate”, donors have been slashing their disbursements. In October, the IMF also suspended loans to Malawi…