The State of the Nation address has demonstrated a few startling realisations to many of us. What was for a long time a subtle, nuanced, means of eliciting control over media and any opposition to government was flung out into the open during the address. The ANC seems to battle with what Constitutionalism really is. […]
State of the Nation Address
Sona: Did you hear Zuma chuckle?
By Michelle October Last night, did anybody else hear that laugh? It was a long, satisfied, deep-throated chuckle. Just moments before, half of the parliamentarians elected to govern the country alongside Jacob Zuma and his party had rose up against him, in a last resounding, powerless attempt to make him see reason. The renegades in […]
The female state of the nation 2015
This state of the nation is one that asks you, for a few moments, to consider some information about the majority of South Africans. Some information about the biggest population group that is not a racial or religious group. This state of the nation asks “what is the problem” and “what can we do next”. […]
Social media dump Zuma in a political pickle
It is a legal maxim never to ask in court a question to which you don’t already know the answer. There’s a political equivalent, which is never to ask voters for advice that you don’t intend taking. In advance of next week’s State of the Nation address (Sona), the Presidency invited South Africans to use […]
Zuma’s State of the Nation address: Sona or just sonorous?
“Now is the hour. This is the moment. South Africa can no longer afford endless rhetoric and mutual recriminations. My government needs to act. It has an electoral mandate to act. And act we shall. We stand or fall by the deliverables that we pledge today.” These are extracts from what political observers, both locally […]