Tony Leon draws on Martin Niemöller’s First They Came, warning that the country’s decaying institutions, political ambivalence, and rising anti-immigrant mob justice are creating a dangerous echo of the scapegoating and silence that enabled atrocities elsewhere. The renewed festival of hate against migrants in South Africa is a timely reminder of the famous 1946 prose of German [...]
Bafana’s dismal World Cup opener against Mexico is more than a football story, writes Tony Leon. He argues that it’s a damning metaphor for a nation where accountability is absent, mediocrity is rewarded, and the gap between 1995’s Springbok glory and today’s decline grows ever wider. Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch” was a 1992 best seller chronicling [...]
From Bismarck to Blair, the art of political triangulation has delivered landslide victories – but as Cyril Ramaphosa’s hollow pivot on immigration shows, co-opting the politics of others is no substitute for the courage to change your own, writes Tony Leon. If you want to get current politics down to a T here and everywhere, just [...]
From the shock of Wakkerstroom in 1924 to the DA’s razor-thin eight-vote victory in a 98% black township nearly a century later, South Africa’s by-elections have often signalled shifts in the political weather long before the storm arrives, writes Tony Leon. Just over a century ago, on 17 June 1924, the National Party won its first [...]
