Criminologists argue that prisons deflect attention away from the goings-on of the wealthy and the powerful
Gupta
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Zille and Zuma: A fading star, a black hole and the end of an era
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 […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
A promising PhD-student’s take on the so-called ‘Zupta’- phenomenon
What follows here is a piece by one of my and Prof. Pieter Duvenage’s graduate students, Casper Lötter, who is a PhD-candidate in Social Philosophy at the University of the Free State – it first appeared in the Weekend Post on 5 November: ‘In a recent and valuable contribution, Raymond Suttner asks, “What is the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma washes his hands of a looming crisis
To state that South Africa is spinning towards a serious crisis is not hyperbole. There are many factors causing this, including failed governance and delivery, but at its nub it is triggered by greed and powered by a ruthless determination to subvert our democracy and the mechanisms that protect it. This is not yet the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
SA’s number one VVIP deserves an upgrade
The department of defence has an irrevocable obligation to buy what its minister describes as “a VVIP” jet. That means an aircraft for a Very Very Important Person. But jump to no conclusions as to who this VVIP is. It is not the man who is referred to by his scurrying minions as “Number one”. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Live by the legal sword, die by it
Recourse to the courts is often the first refuge of the scoundrel with deep pockets. A deliberately protracted judicial process can be used by the wealthy to delay, to avoid, to obfuscate, and to bully their adversaries into submission. It’s an approach that has worked well for various South African rogues, embezzlers, crooks and unsavoury […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Time for Zuma to go
By Motsumi Maubane The perception that the Gupta family has a hold on President Jacob Zuma, in my mind, constitutes high treason and a serious threat to our national security for this would compromise our constitutional democracy and sovereignty of our South African state. Essentially it would mean the family has usurped executive authority from […]
Posted inNews/Politics
It’s not about capture but control
Catchphrases quickly move from being nifty idioms that ignite thought to clichés that stifle it. Such is the likely fate of “state capture”, a phrase that features in virtually every media account of President Jacob Zuma’s controversial relationship with the Gupta family. But what has been happening in the past weeks is not about state […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Is there a ‘reasonable person’ in charge of SA?
This week President Jacob Zuma went to Parliament to account to the people, as constitutionally a president periodically perforce must. The key issue was the role that his political benefactors, the Gupta clan, allegedly play in ministerial appointments. What a nation agog over a series of revelations from within African National Congress ranks had hoped […]
Posted inNews/Politics
EFF has only contempt for democracy and the law
As South Africans are discovering, a state-of-the-art constitution does not of itself a thriving democracy make. Similarly, ersatz military ranks, red berets and Che Guevara slogans do not a revolution make. The Economic Freedom Fighters love radical rhetoric but the seizure of “white” land and the nationalisation without compensation of the mines are, at this […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The A to Z of things we cannot blame on apartheid
At Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, President Jacob Zuma made the point that “he (Mandela) told us that the promises of democracy would not be met overnight … and we all agreed with him … ”. Was this a co-option of Madiba somehow to justify the slow pace of service delivery? While it is true that […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Of thieves, crooks, thugs and so on
Business people the world over work to build political connections in order to gain competitive advantage. There is no law that prohibits the creation and existence of such mutual relationships between business and politics. Both are intrinsically linked and cannot exist without the other, especially in a pretentious free-market system. The lowering of ethical standards […]