Monthly Archives: March 2021

Don’t blame ‘vaccine apartheid’ as you sleepwalk through pandemic, Cyril

Using the old South African trope of eliding the 27-year-in-office government from any blame or accountability for its missteps was given a whole new meaning on Monday. The usual all-purpose, all-weather ruse of blaming apartheid is more challenging in respect of the novel coronavirus which only took root here last March, almost 26 years after [...]

By |2021-03-31T08:36:56+00:00March 31st, 2021|Corona Virus, Cyril Ramaphosa|0 Comments

Israel a handy alibi for SA’s poor foreign policy

In 1977, when apartheid was at its zenith and Johannesburg still had a booming city centre, I helped organise a conference at a five-star establishment, the President Hotel, where, as a first-year university student, I was hugely impressed by the passion and profundity of our keynote speaker, the 46-year-old firebrand secretary-general of the South African [...]

By |2021-03-28T06:36:06+00:00March 28th, 2021|African National Congress (ANC), Opinion|0 Comments

How can SA swallow Cyril Ramaphosa’s big whoppers?

In 2011 Cyril Ramaphosa added to his personal fortune when he secured a 20-year deal, via his Shanduka Group, to run all 145 McDonald’s restaurants in SA. In 2016 he sold his franchise rights for “an undisclosed sum” to a Middle Eastern company. No doubt the president still has a fond attachment to junk food’s [...]

The simple fact is that the ANC has been in power too long

A famous historian archly observed that “the wheel of history is often turned by the god of irony”. We have no shortage of examples of this fundamental truth. Joel Netshitenzhe, regarded as the reigning intellect of the governing party here, popularised the adage, “the sins of incumbency”. In June 2012, when Jacob Zuma was in [...]

By |2021-03-17T05:47:28+00:00March 17th, 2021|African National Congress (ANC), Opinion|0 Comments

How the ANC has chased away investors, taxpayers and prosperity

Despite the magic of [Nelson] Mandela and the so-called rainbow miracle, 900,000 South Africans left the country from 1990 to 2018. Although this covers all eras from [FW] De Klerk through to [Jacob] Zuma, it gives a flavour of the size of the exodus. And the group with the greatest mobility and the easiest options [...]

By |2021-03-09T09:13:43+00:00March 9th, 2021|Opinion|0 Comments

Who leads the DA when Steenhuisen follows another leader?

When I was leader of the opposition, I once compared the job with its certain punishments and uncertain prospects as “making bricks without straw”. Sometimes there were opportunities to reach and targets to hit, but equally the very basics for construction were often missing. From a now vanished age, late United Party MP and opposition [...]

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